Varsity Domination!

Clean Sweep for Oxford with victory in Mens & Womens Marathon, Canoe Polo and Freestyle.
Congratulations to Andrew Spurr for dominating the Marathon, the polo team feat Giacomo for a 9-0 victory and all the girls, also I won the freestyle, yay!

Corsica - A water park for grown ups

With Easter fast approaching a plan was formed to head to Corsica for a cheap 5 days paddling in th birthplace of creek boating. The crew was Rob Moffat, Stu Martindale, Tom Venebles and Me all from OUCKC.
It absolutely lived up to its reputation, Corsica is awesome, everywhere you look perfect drops and slides, combine this with cheap wine and plentiful brie it made a great trip.
Gravona: We wanted to do the Liamone but it was too low so we hit the Gravona as a consolation/warm up - it actually proved to be a fun little river with some nice moves, but nothing challenging.
Rizzanese: This year could be the last year of the Rizzanese before it is flooded by a damn project at the get out so we were super keen to get on and paddle it before it goes, tragically, forever. And what a river with big attractions including a 10m drop it would be easy to forget how fun the rest of it was. Did walk the 50/50 drop though, but that should still be there hopefully.

Travo: - Bravo! Sweet Slides
Codi: Hahaha I love this river, genuinly I think its one of the best rivers Ive ever paddled. It starts off with what looks like a ditch descending very steeply into a wooded valley, and thats how it continues, around every corner we found a 2-3m drop with a good move.

Rob Moffat rock bashes his way through the gap

With no swims and no drama come the last day something had to go on, so it was inevitable to wake up on our last day to a car that refused to start. A call to the rescue services in broken french got us going again, with enough time for a final sprint down the Rizzanese.

Corsica's an amazing place, I cant wait to head back next year.
Cheers to Kayak Session for their video guide.

NSR MMX

This was my first time to attend the famous National Student Rodeo.
What a weekend it was, the boys at Leeds and River Legacy put on a great party on the saturday night and it was a great chance to catch up with mates from all over the country.
I entered the Topo Duo competion with Mike Geary and after winning our race and dominating the freestyle heats we found ourself in the final. We had a strong run in the final, but alas it wasnt to be with the judges from Leeds awarding the Leeds boat victory.

The student life.(+a video!)

So, my first term at Uni was not very productivel in terms of kayaking, but there was a lot of other stuff going on, including drama, rowing and climbing, the lack of a car in Oxford also meant I had to rely on other people.
By the end of term I was desperate for a white water hit, so on the day after the end of term I headed down to Exeter for the Sunday of the G17 weekend to paddle with Hugh Graham and got the Upper Dart at the perfect level and a cheeky run down the Erme.
After that I headed up to North Wales to meet up with Broadley and did a few runs of the Fairy Glen, a new river for me, and it didnt go smoothly with a deck implosion on Fairy Falls forcing me bail. We did it again the next day which went a lot better.
No photos of this, but I have made a brief video from some shots I got over the last year.
Wanderings:

Wanderings 2009 from Nick Roberts on Vimeo.

Wet West Paddle Fest 2010

I had a great time at the Wet West Paddle Fest, this was my first time to go there and I headed up with Jono and Chase
The Garry was fairly dull, but the party on saturday night was great, caught up with loads of friends and drank Slovenian wine.
The Morriston on sunday was fantastic, with a big first drop and some fun rapids, the organisers did a fantastic job with regular minibuses making it easy to do laps.
We stayed on the next day to paddle the Falls of Lora tidal waves which were at the best levels for the year and formed a really good standing wave.
Cant wait for next year!

Eurotrip - Austria,Switzerland,Slovenia

As summer rapidly came to an end an exchange of emails with Sandy Douglas led to a hastily made plan to head to Austria to try to catch the last of the meltwater in the Alps.
The plan was to first drive to Graz in the East of Austria via the slalom course in Augsburg where we would visit my friend Paula and subsequently to head west to the Austrian Alps.

Graz was the first stop, for some city surfing and sightseeing. There are two features created by the bridges in Graz, when we were there the top wave was working and the bottom feature was a tricky hole.
After leaving Graz we headed west to find some real white water. The first stop on our journey was Laussa falls, a nice 7 metre park and huck drop. All should have gone well until I narrowly avoided a swim after a deck implosion lead to me almost getting stuck at the bottom of the fall.

A few hours more driving later and the next day we found ourselves in the Oetz Valley.
The first river we paddled was the Lower Oetz, which was a dull easy wave train. Things improved dramatically with the Pitzbach, which we paddled with two Germans, a low volume technical run which started high up a beautiful valley. We also completed runs on the Upper Oetz, the Wolfs Gorge, anda fun bumpy run on the Upper Lanquart and the Venter Ache, though levels on rivers other than the Oetz could have used more water.

Sandy Cruising on the Pitzbach

After a few days in the Oetz valley Sandy had to leave and I made my way to Thun to watch the last weekend of the World Freestyle Championship, I managed to grab a sofa in the house of the Irish team thanks to Mark and joined in the last couple of nights of partying as well as getting to paddle the fantastic Weiss Leutschine with Julian and Mark, after doing laps of the waterfall at the top.
As the weekend ended I headed north to go home, I stopped at Bremgarten wave for a play. There I met a few of the guys from the British team and a plan emerged to make the journey to Slovenia to paddle the Soca river.

A combination of beautiful paddling, cheap wine, and sleeping by the river made for an awesome few days relaxation before the drive back home

Lamu - "A man without a donkey, is a donkey"

After a long time on the Nile, the urge to travel led me, Mark Leonard an Irish kayaker who is always good craic and Lizzie Fritts one of my fellow volunteer kayakers on an adventure to Lamu on the Kenyan coast in search of surf, culture and adventure.

The journey to Lamu took over 24 hours through Kenya via Nairobi and Mombasa by bus, with kayaks followed by a trip on the ferry before arriving in Lamu and renting a room.
We spent our time in Lamu looking for new surf spots, as we were as far as we knew the first people to bring kayaks to Lamu.

Dhow Trip - Photo by Lizzie Fritts

We had some success and found one excellent point break, unfortunalely I didnt get many good photos of the surf.

Lamu is one island in an archepelago off the east coast of Africa - it is originally Swahili town and still remains relatively unspoilt by tourism, the centre of the town is a maze of narrow allies and backstreets, transport around the town is by donkey and there are only two cars on the island, the town ambulance and the majors car. Outside the town we found miles of deserted beaches.