A quick dash North ..River Spey
Neil Thompson, John Cairns and Sam Bean.
Three of us had set aside a few days at the end of March 2025 during which to paddle the Spey, ideally from Newtonmore to the sea. As it was, the weather gave us 3 dry days, so we dropped a car at the golf club at Spey Bay, buying a coffee from the kind people running the place. This is only a 10-minute walk from the sea, but there’s no overnight parking at the dolphin centre, which wasn’t helpful.
A wee drive to the put in had us packed and ready to go at 1 from the bridge at Boat of Garten near Aviemore, we even had sunshine! The level was good at 0.73m on the Aberlour gauge.
The river at this point ambles along with a few bits of rapids and can be a bit exposed to winds, but we made it to Boat of Balliefurth, where we camped for the night. This spot is ideal with a tap and a small loo, yet quiet and nothing formal at all. We had a windy evening after an easy but successful first half day. It was good to be out on the river. The owner of the land was really friendly, a good spot.
Day 2. The weather was good the following morning, phew! Departing our camp as we found it, tidy and clean, we set off, aiming to camp near the washing machine so we had several sets of fun rapids to contend with. At this level, the Spey has most of the boulders covered with a good flow, yet not moving too fast, much less water would have us grounded a bit. There are a good number of grade 2 rapids to mess around on route, but with boats full of people and kit, we did have a bit of baling.
Generally, John and Sam paddled my 15ft Silverbirch, and I used a shiny new Esquif with a bit more clearance. As such, their boat sat a bit lower in the water, as you can imagine, which caused some degree of amusement and required a more conservative approach trying to avoid the worst of the wave trains, obviously, this wasn’t always successful.
We had great fun at Knockando, several lunch stops with tea, and late in the day, we had a look at the washing machine prior to running it. We decided to empty the boats of kit prior to running the rapid, albeit the esquif would probably have managed ok. I think the crew would have “gone down with the ship” had we not emptied the broadland. All went well, and we camped a few hundred metres down on the bankside away from everyone. A good fun day, 27km in the sun with lots to see. There is a reasonable amount of birdlife on route with herons, kingfishers, dipper, geese, sandpiper, etc A good number of polite fisher folk to work around, but that’s fine and most of all masses of clean water with no rubbish. A far cry from most of the English rivers!
Day 3, we had about 40k to the sea, which seemed a lot, but the Spey picks up speed at the end, and according to the GPS, we covered 50k in 7 hrs, arriving at Spey bay at low tide and still in full sun. I can imagine high tide would slow things down and cause some more route-finding issues, as there are quite a few channels to pick from and lots of trees in the river near the end, so we had to look well ahead. The last day had plenty of fun yet easy rapids with only the surprise of a couple of huge boulders mid river, which we avoided but could easily unseat the inattentive paddler.
We had a great 3 days in dry conditions finishing with fish and chips and a B&B in Newtonmore, all completed just before the driving rain arrived. Perfect.
Many thanks to John Cairns and Sam Bean for their excellent company. Photos from John, good stuff.
Looking forward to the next trip.