At the beginning of March Jimbo and I headed to Roybridge in Scotland for a week of boating. Snow had fallen the week before, but we arrived to sunny skies and a nice moderate air temperature. This made for great conditions for paddling. We hit a good amount of the 'usual' classic runs of the area, Spean Gorge, Roy, Etive e.t.c But our real joy came from discovering rivers that we had thus far never visited.
The 2 most enjoyable and memorable in my mind were the Fassfern and Dubh Lighe. The Fassfern is a great grade 4(5) run full of rock slides and small drops. Excluding Tango, the one grade 5 rapid on the section, the whole river is easy to scout by boat, this means the fun never ends and you spend maximum time in a boat. Backwards Slab (4) is one of the last rapids on the river, the guidebook describes this rapid: 'This is begging to be run backwards; failure to do so will bring bad 'juju' for the rest of your trip'. Needless to say both Jimbo and I ran this backwards as bad juju did not sound like a good thing.
We then headed about 5 miles up the road to the Dubh Lighe 4(5). This river could not be any more different to the Fassfern. The get in was either above or below a narrow gorge that was seemingly near impossible to inspect, but looked like it had some nice grade 4-5 drops in it, we played it safe and got in below. The rest of the river made for a great afternoons technical creek boating. The river is very steep and we spent a lot of time jumping out of boats to see if the horizon line was runnable. Some drops we ran some we ran away from, but at the end of the river we were all very happy with the ones we did, and had no regrets about those that we did not.
One of the things that appeals to me about white water kayaking is being in remote, beautiful places with little to worry about apart from when to eat that penguin* in your buoyancy aid pocket. Scotland again made me feel this, and in my mind beats laying beside a pool in 30 degree heat every time.
Mark
*The chocolate bar, not the smartly dressed flightless bird. Other chocolate bars are available.
