River Dee – Llangollen to the Boat Inn

Perfect Peer trip – Opens from Ponsonby Arms to Boat Inn.

This is often an amazing time of the year for open boat trips. Good weather, warm, good water levels and days that are still not too short – today was one of those days.

3 LCC paddlers met at the Ponsonby Arms for a medium water trip – 0.85 on river predictor, medium water over the step at the car park. Sue decided that, since she was soon to get a new boat and Colin was at work, she would take a solo ww trip!

On and heading down, we quickly got used to the fast flow and grabbed an eddy for today’s top tip. Avoid trees; think about entry into rapids so as to ease the run through the rapid, positioning at top to enable easy avoidance of the hazard below.

A few rapids in and Sue was mastering that skill, so another quick tip of driving into the eddies, and that was all set for the day.

The high flow meant lovely bouncy rapids, with big waves at Trevor, and then big curling waves underneath the aqueduct saw us all take on water – time for an empty and first lunch at Ty Mawr. Onwards under sun and through big bouncy waves saw us past several friendly fishermen, wild swimmers and the amazing glint of blue that are kingfishers. We also had an unusual incident of a man coming to his picture window, lifting his shirt to show us his belly and chest. He simply stood there for several minutes until we passed – Sue assured me that it wasn’t as toned as Colin’s.

The bottom weir looked quite meaty for our open boats, so we decided to portage- not an easy route with opens, but we did so efficiently.

Then down to the Boat Inn where we met Colin for drinks and food by the lovely warm fire.

A Tip Top day!

Mike, Ian & Sue