With a pretty dismal helping of rain to the Thames Valley over the Winter only resulting in one session at Hurley, as soon as I heard that obscene amounts of rain were due to fall over the Valley it was certainly time to start monitoring the Weirs and get on with some hard Uni Work so I could be free for the weekends to follow.
What followed was two weekends of awesome paddling at some of the best wave boating spots that the UK has to offer.
On the first weekend we managed to catch a beasty Hurley on 4 Gates as it was starting to wash out, then Hambleden on a really good fun and very dumpy 3 gates but the real treat was getting Shepperton on a bowling 5 and 6 gates for two days in the sun!
The next week consisted of late nights getting work done so I could spend the bank holiday down South paddling again!
The decision was made to go to Marsh Weir on Friday and with all gates opened it was a river wide flat wave that allowed both hole moves and wave moves to be thrown down. As the river started to drop the gates were being closed at Marsh one by one. As the far gates closed a large wave formed, it was like paddling a completely different feature and was a lot better than the classic river wide flat wave that marsh usually produces. The tow onto the wave was tricky and you really had to fight to catch the eddies but it was certainly worth it for the wave. It was amazing to have such a big wave in a town and all the town folk watching from the bridge.
As the river continued to drop and Marsh closed up for good we drove the 5 minute journey down the road and finished the weekend paddling Hurley on a classic 3 gates.
All in all 2 extremely good weekends but for me it's back to Uni now to get my work in before I head off to the Euros in June.
Check out this quick flick from Shepperton and also the photos courtesy of George Younger.
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