I recently canoed down part of the Border Esk with my seven year old son, Evan, guided by Matt Thompson of Wilderness Canoe ( http://www.wilderness-canoe.co.uk/ ). We met at the picturesque market town of Langholm, transferred our canoe and gear to Matt's van and set off to the put in.
Travelling to Eskdalemuir and beyond through sunshine and showers, we arrived at our starting point, unloaded everything from the van, loaded the canoes and set off.
The plan was to put Evan into Matt's canoe for the first day so that Evan could be taught some basic paddle strokes, while I practised my moving water paddling, which wasn't great in the first place, and hasn't been practised in the last two years.
Matt had Evan practise his balance, disguised as pretending to be various birds whilst standing up: The Dipper, bob up and down, The Wagtail, do the twist, and The Swallow, arms out to the side while humming the Dambuster's theme.
We passed the grounds of the Samye Ling Buddhist Centre, and Matt and Evan built a seven tiered sculpture each to commemorate the Buddhist lucky number.
The river could have done with an extra six inches of water in it, and an extra foot would have made it about perfect for our needs. As it was, despite a few boney section there was generally enough water in it for us to float down with only the occasional bump, and plentiful short sections of minor rapids.
The weather was very mixed, with ocasional strong gusts of wind. Sometimes it rained....
Sometimes it shone...
And then we stopped for the night in a nice mature plantation.
Evan made a den
The weather stayed dry while sat around the fire, and Matt made a bannock that was a vast improvement on the one that I made on Loch Shiel. Mine was barely edible, Matt's was delicious, especialy with a slice of butter on it.
The next morning dawned wet and windy. We had breakfast, got packed up and set off. The plan had been for Evan to be in my canoe from the start, but given the conditions, we agreed that Evan would stay in Matt's canoe unless the weather improved.
We passed a short section of the river that we lined the canoes down,
and after that, despite the generally sheltered nature of the river, the forecasted strong winds and squalls came along and hit us from time to time.
The weather started to improve, so much so that we transferred Evan into my canoe. With hindsight, this may have been a mistake. We carried on down, a very nice section of treelined river interspersed with easy but entertaining rapids. The river took a sharp turn to the right, and suddenly there was a bridge with two supports in the river ahead of us.
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en...042183&spn=0.000755,0.002411&t=h&z=19&iwloc=A
I didn't manage to avoid the right hand support, hiting it on the RHS. Because I was in the back, the current caught hold of my end and swung us broadside. I kept the upstream gunwale up, but this made the wave that was breaking on the bridge support flood the downstream end. The canoe filled with water and Evan and I were swimming, one either side of the support in fast flowing water.
We were out of the water very quickly, within 10 or fifteen meters, and with Matt having gone through first he plucked Evan from the water.
When we went back to look at the canoe, things looked grim. It was wrapped around the support, with the packs in it ( with our dry clothes in ), and it looked as though it wasn't going anywhere soon.
Matt then proved that years of training and experience are of great use. He swam out to the canoe and freed our packs so that we could change ( I ended up just changing Evan, as the warning on drybags stating that they're not suitable for immersion turns out to be true, and most of my spre clothes were wet ). He rigged up a Z pulley from the far side of the river and we tried to unpin the canoe, but the force of the water was too great. We then tried to lift one end of the canoe from the bridge above, with the same result. Matt then took my car keys and paddled down to Langholm, picked my car up and drove back to us. We then collected Matt's van, drove back to the pinned canoe, and to cut a long storey short, had to use Matt's climbing rope and my car to free the canoe.
The result wasn't pretty, but the canoe has made a remarkable recovery. The following pics are a few days later, but with no work on the canoe:
Thanks to Matt for his great company, and professional skills.
No children were harmed in the production of this trip tale, just ever so briefly traumatised. Evan's actually quite pleased that it happened, as he's certain to get his Beaver Scout's Adventurous badge now.
Cheers, Michael.
Travelling to Eskdalemuir and beyond through sunshine and showers, we arrived at our starting point, unloaded everything from the van, loaded the canoes and set off.
The plan was to put Evan into Matt's canoe for the first day so that Evan could be taught some basic paddle strokes, while I practised my moving water paddling, which wasn't great in the first place, and hasn't been practised in the last two years.
Matt had Evan practise his balance, disguised as pretending to be various birds whilst standing up: The Dipper, bob up and down, The Wagtail, do the twist, and The Swallow, arms out to the side while humming the Dambuster's theme.
We passed the grounds of the Samye Ling Buddhist Centre, and Matt and Evan built a seven tiered sculpture each to commemorate the Buddhist lucky number.
The river could have done with an extra six inches of water in it, and an extra foot would have made it about perfect for our needs. As it was, despite a few boney section there was generally enough water in it for us to float down with only the occasional bump, and plentiful short sections of minor rapids.
The weather was very mixed, with ocasional strong gusts of wind. Sometimes it rained....
Sometimes it shone...
And then we stopped for the night in a nice mature plantation.
Evan made a den
The weather stayed dry while sat around the fire, and Matt made a bannock that was a vast improvement on the one that I made on Loch Shiel. Mine was barely edible, Matt's was delicious, especialy with a slice of butter on it.
The next morning dawned wet and windy. We had breakfast, got packed up and set off. The plan had been for Evan to be in my canoe from the start, but given the conditions, we agreed that Evan would stay in Matt's canoe unless the weather improved.
We passed a short section of the river that we lined the canoes down,
and after that, despite the generally sheltered nature of the river, the forecasted strong winds and squalls came along and hit us from time to time.
The weather started to improve, so much so that we transferred Evan into my canoe. With hindsight, this may have been a mistake. We carried on down, a very nice section of treelined river interspersed with easy but entertaining rapids. The river took a sharp turn to the right, and suddenly there was a bridge with two supports in the river ahead of us.
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en...042183&spn=0.000755,0.002411&t=h&z=19&iwloc=A
I didn't manage to avoid the right hand support, hiting it on the RHS. Because I was in the back, the current caught hold of my end and swung us broadside. I kept the upstream gunwale up, but this made the wave that was breaking on the bridge support flood the downstream end. The canoe filled with water and Evan and I were swimming, one either side of the support in fast flowing water.
We were out of the water very quickly, within 10 or fifteen meters, and with Matt having gone through first he plucked Evan from the water.
When we went back to look at the canoe, things looked grim. It was wrapped around the support, with the packs in it ( with our dry clothes in ), and it looked as though it wasn't going anywhere soon.
Matt then proved that years of training and experience are of great use. He swam out to the canoe and freed our packs so that we could change ( I ended up just changing Evan, as the warning on drybags stating that they're not suitable for immersion turns out to be true, and most of my spre clothes were wet ). He rigged up a Z pulley from the far side of the river and we tried to unpin the canoe, but the force of the water was too great. We then tried to lift one end of the canoe from the bridge above, with the same result. Matt then took my car keys and paddled down to Langholm, picked my car up and drove back to us. We then collected Matt's van, drove back to the pinned canoe, and to cut a long storey short, had to use Matt's climbing rope and my car to free the canoe.
The result wasn't pretty, but the canoe has made a remarkable recovery. The following pics are a few days later, but with no work on the canoe:
Thanks to Matt for his great company, and professional skills.
No children were harmed in the production of this trip tale, just ever so briefly traumatised. Evan's actually quite pleased that it happened, as he's certain to get his Beaver Scout's Adventurous badge now.
Cheers, Michael.
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