Explore the Rivers You Know

This post is probably a bit mistimed as we are going into the wetter months and our season kicks off. But I think it's something I will always try to remember, especially when I find myself on rivers I THINK I know like the back of my hand and although I will be paddling some new rivers I will definitely be trying to do this on the rivers I am more familiar with.

Recently I have been trying something new, but in places that are anything but! Although we all love to get out on different rivers and explore new places, the weather-dependent nature of British White Water means many of us paddle a handful of places for most of our time on the water (especially during the dryer summer months). A combination of rivers that are local to us, (for me that's 2-3 nights a week at Jackfield) and those that run even when there is little else running. We've spent almost every Saturday and some Sundays on the Upper Tryweryn since April and I have been there 52 days in the last 12-13 months.

This can get monotonous, and sometimes we can start (or at least I have) taking these awesome places for granted, but more than that, I sometimes felt like I was limited in what I could do. Every lap was a repeat of the last, and you get into a routine on rivers you know really well, hit this eddy then that one, surf this wave, splat that rock. So I felt like I was stagnating, I was asking myself the question, if I'm repeating the same things over and over again am I still becoming a better paddler or just getting better at being able to repeat those specific moves? And it does become less fun, in a way, don't get me wrong I would rather be on the water than anywhere else and I was never coming close to becoming bored, but some of the excitement was fading away.

I started to realise a way to begin to fix this problem after shadowing Jamie Greenhalgh on a coached session on the Dee, with some intermediate paddlers a few months ago. Jamie had us playing games in different spots, synchronised ferry gliding and eddy leapfrog, Eddy leap frog was absolutely my favourite, in the section from chain bridge down to the top of serpents I was amazed at how many eddys I'd never even noticed before and definitely hadn't been in. After that session me and my paddle buddys started to play eddy leap frog on the Dee and the Lower and Upper Tryweryn, especially on club trips with paddlers who wanted to improve their river reading. It's amazing how many eddys (even very obvious and relatively easy ones) that you don't notice or never attempt to get into. This was the first instance of me realising how much I had stopped reading the rivers I knew well, I had stopped looking and stopped noticing (and I think in the case of the Dee, I had been led down it so many times before I started making decisions for myself, I never even started).

My second moment of realisation came a couple of months later when I was paddling with Matthew Clive on the Upper T, Matt only started paddling the upper this year. We had started from the top site, and I'd always gotten the eddy on the left just after the slopey weir then ferried over and dropped down over swimmers weir into the eddy on the right. I came up to the top of the slopey weir and Matt was sat in an eddy on right, Me and Paul looked at each other, "I've never seen anyone in there" "me neither". Paul caught the eddy on the left and ferried over to that "new" eddy, then I dropped down the weir into it. Suddenly it was like I had finally started looking at the river around me. At that moment I noticed another tiny eddy in the middle with a nice surf wave to the right of it that I had never spotted before. I felt like I had just taken off a blindfold formed of familiarity

Since then I decided I would always try to look at a river like I've never been down it before, I've always tried to do this when river running, from a safety perspective, but now I was doing it from a play point of view. I've found multiple new surf spots on the Upper since, new eddies, new moves to try. Especially on the middle section of the graveyard, there is always a new challenge. On top of that I also try to mix up the way I do things. Instead of following my old challenge of catching as many tricky eddys as possible on each section, sometimes I'll hit just one or two half way down, approaching the familiar from unfamiliar angles, with more/ less speed. And I no longer feel like I am just doing the same lap on repeat, and I can feel my paddling skills improving and on top of that, I'm sure I am improving my decision-making and river reading too. Something I thought I needed to paddle new or at least less familiar rivers to do, not on a river I have paddled literally 52 times within 12 months.

I think all that waffling can be surmised into one sentence. Don't forget to explore the rivers you know, you never know what you might find.