Day 1 (28th June)
Saturday started bright and early as I threw the last few
things in the car and hurried the husband out the house. Up to St. Andrews and
drop Davey off on South Street for his 9.30am start. I nip into the shop with
him to buy a new pair of sunglasses as mine have disappeared into the ether. I
drive round to Andre’s house and call him to see if he’s awake, then belatedly
remember while the phone rings that I was supposed to pick him up from Jon’s.
Oops. So, round to Dave’s place, then up to Scooniehill road to get Andre and
Carolyn. Finally, we’re packed and ready, just don’t look too hard at the car’s
(lack of) suspension.
We stop at Glenrothes Asda to fuel up on snacks and coffee,
then head off south. I drive to Abbington, then Dave gets his first turn behind
the wheel as we hit the M74. I attempt to set up the sat nav, so we know where
to go once we hit the chaos that is Englandshire, but it keeps telling us to
turn off the motorway. Eventually it transpires that, due to some unfortunate
settings being switched certain ways, the sat nav wants us to turn around, go
to the airport and get on a plane. So begins the saga of us vs the sat nav.
The drive down is fairly uneventful. We are less than
complementary about the scenery (three scots and an Irishman, what do you expect).
Somewhere around the black hole of Birmingham the sat nav decides to take us on
a tour around some villages. The twisty roads don’t agree with me, so we swap
drivers. Dave has apparently been ignoring Amy’s instructions to drive
efficiently, as the mpg is way down. We fiddle with the sat nav some more and
get back on the motorway. In the distance between there and Ascot I actually
manage to get the mpg up to 50, an impressive feat.
Ah, Ascot. Well. It’s an interesting place. We see a sign on
a pub that says “Horses welcome, have a drink with your horse!” and wonder what
strange dimension we have accidentally fallen into. Houses are the size of
castles, and hidden by hedges the size of forests, crenelated walls and turrets
that probably contain anti-riff-raff guns. Needless to say, some of us feel
mildly unwelcome…
Jon’s house, when we get to it, is actually quite normal,
though massive and surrounded by houses with columns and 4x4s with blacked out
windows. His family are very lovely and make everyone else pizza, while happily
instructing me on how to use the microwave which has more buttons than my tv
remote. I have gluten free pasta bake for tea, leftovers from the night before.
After dinner we chatter for a bit, then realise we have to get up before 4am
tomorrow and go to bed. Well, get into sleeping bags and slump all over the
place. Somehow I manage to get the sofa. It’s like a big marshmallow.
Day 2
3.45am comes around with an incessantly beeping alarm clock.
I go upstairs, manage to get my contacts in my eyes and shove my face under a
cold tap. I’m vaguely awake. It’s still dark outside. I don’t think my brain can
quite cope with this. Somehow we manage to end up in Dover, having stopped to
get ridiculously over priced fuel on the way. The ferry is supposed to be at
7.30, so we have a while to wait. It’s drizzling a bit, but we cheerfully
wander around and chat. James and Cami’s car is here (they were picking up
Emily from Southampton yesterday, so weren’t at Ascot), so we get to hear all
about their journey. Someone discovers Costa in the P&O terminal. Coffee!
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| Waiting to get on the ferry at Dover. |
For someone who gets motion sickness easily, the wobbly
crossing to Calais is torturous. I just manage to keep hold of my meagre
breakfast. I’m sure everyone else is having a nice time. Dave takes over
driving and I’m so happy to be off the ferry that it seems quite exciting to be
in Calais. We’re not there long, though. Soon, we hit the road south and motor
off. I doze off and on, draw doodles in the expenses record, hang out the window
and try to figure out toll machines and chatter about nothing and anything. We
admonish science for failing to have come up with teleportation. Service
stations are raided for coffee. Dave insists he wants to keep driving. Andre’s
sat nav gets confused by the new Lyon bypass.
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| Sleepy Dre. |
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| This driver is brought to you by caffeine. |
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| Look, Alps! |
At Grenoble we can finally see the Alps! We stop for diesel,
which is the same price in Euros as it was in pounds this morning. I finally
take over from Dave after his epic 10 hour drive. From Grenoble the motorways
give way to ordinary two lane roads, climbing up, up, always up. Carolyn and
Andre play a rather competitive game of Uno in the back. The temperature drops
as we climb, as does the sun. At about 10pm I realise that I’ve had my contacts
in for about 18 hours when they’re only rated to 12. We have a stop and I take
them out. It’s 3.5 degrees outside and the car warns us about ice.
Finally we’re going down. The road winds down for a long way
until we get to Briançon. We leave the town with excitement and a following
truck, which tail gates us all the way to Roche de Rame. Given that it’s after 11pm
and I’ve been up nearly 20 hours, I am not in the slightest bit bothered by his
insistent honking and flashing of lights. I slow down for the turning into the
camp site a little bit more than necessary.
Our instructions for the campsite consisted of “Go in and
turn right”. This resulted in only a couple of wrong turnings, and soon we had
found the others. Taking note of our impressive 62.5 mpg for the day, we threw
tents into a vaguely upright position somewhere near the car and fell into our
sleeping bags, exhausted.
Day 3
A rather relaxed start is suddenly interrupted by all the
students suddenly running around and trying to get out of the campsite and off
to the river really quickly. Eating my porridge, I refuse to be hurried. No
rush.
We stop at the Carrefour in L’Argentierre and it comes out
that the reason for the rush was that no-one else had thought to bring any
breakfast. Students.
We head to the slalom site at L’Argentierre to let everyone get
a bit of practice and a gentle introduction to Alpine water. When I was last
here, in 2008, the whole region was experiencing some serious flooding. The
slalom site was a churning grey obstacle course of huge holes and very few visible
rocks. Today, however, it’s blue water, clean eddies and fluffy white waves. I
snap some pictures of the others, then walk my boat up and accompany James on
an eddy hop down. The water is fast, much more powerful than what I’m used to,
so I decide that I want to try my other paddles, Werner Sherpas. Mostly, they
have just not been used much, unlike my Robsons, so they have a larger blade
size and more powerful strokes as a consequence.
This turns out to be rather fortunate for John Rothwell when
his home repaired paddle suddenly becomes unrepaired. Looking pathetic carrying
his two bits of paddle, he asks if he can get the spare club paddle out of my
car. I offer him my Robsons and one run with the club Ainsworths later he’s
back asking if the offer is still there. Of course!
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| Jonty looking back up the slalom site. |
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| Jonny playing in the waves. |
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| Lunch chaos. |
Lunch! We spread out all over the grassy area by the car
park and make sandwiches. The alps veterans discuss the afternoon’s options.
Eventually they decide on the Briançon gorge, so we pack up and head north to
Briançon. We leave Raffa’s car by the take out and shove his boat on Chris’s
car, so we can do a shuttle later. At the put in, Sarah nearly throws up
(again) and decides to have a sit in the shade and read her book before someone
tells her another Game of Thrones spoiler.
The put in is properly Alpine. There’s no eddy, just some
rocks to balance your boat on and the promise of micro eddies downstream. My
group consists of Rory, Carolyn, Andre and me, as we were meant to also have
Sarah. Some bouncy, fast grade 2/3 passes in a blur and we are sitting nervously
above the barrage.
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| Rory tries to be confidence inspiring above the barrage. |
Rory tries to inspire confidence, but Carolyn and me are
wide eyed with terror. Once the group in front has been gone for a while, Rory
paddles off to lip, telling us to “leave ten seconds then just go for it”.
Rory has gone. Oh god, that means I have to go now! I paddle
over to the horizon line. It’s a long way down, longer than I’d imagined, but I’m
way past the point of no return. I slide over the edge and onto the canoe
shoot. The acceleration is incredible and I come flying off the end with a high
pitched squeak, drop the five or so feet into the river and beach onto the
shingle beside Rory, who’s grinning fit to burst. Carolyn is already coming
down with the most amazing expression of fear and excitement on her face. She’s
flying through the air and somehow manages to avoid getting stuck beside Rory.
Now Andre’s sliding down, looking cool, but spoils it with a manic grin when he
lands. We survived. Whew.
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| The canoe shoot! |
Now the river starts. Unfortunately for us, the other
groups, who’re all in front of us, seem to be faffing with something. All the
time. We sit in eddies for what seems like most of the afternoon, move maybe a
hundred metres down, then sit for a while more. Finally, Rory calls it, and we
line up behind him, duckling style, and charge. We come across the group right
in front of us. They’re sitting in an eddy for no reason. Bams. We sail past.
The next group are eddy hopping. We float through the middle. The river isn’t
too challenging, grade 3 at most, but it is fast. Really fast! We travel
through the gorge below the Briançon old town, amazingly deep and sheer sided,
with an old stone bridge spanning it.
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| Briancon bridge, high above. |
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| Happy faces deep in the gorge. |
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| Nearing the take out. |
Suddenly the gorge opens out and we’re bimbling
down easy grade 2. Rory points out the take out and we beach on the rocks and
pull the boats up to the layby.
Raffa’s car isn’t here. Huh? Confusion ensues, with everyone
else stopping at our wrong layby. There are many discussions. Most of us take
our kit off and sit in the sun. Rory runs off down the road to find Raffa’s
car. Chris’s group, who were at the front, have clearly gone to the place where
Raffa’s car is, but since this is the actual guide book take out, they should obviously bring the car here! I lie in the sun with Andre and Dave, staying out of it.
Raffa’s car arrives!
We shuttle, pack up and head back to the campsite. Dinner is
cooked for us, a tasty chilli with no chilli powder, no gluten, no lactose, no
egg, no fish and no poultry. Friendly for all!
