River Dee The Boat Inn to Farndon by Allan Blanchard

Due to the weather over the preceding week, I thought we may not be able to have a good day paddling from the Boat Inn, Irbistock to Farndon. I agreed with everyone to meet at the Farndon car park instead of the Boat Inn, the first thing to enable us to review the flow of the river. The river appeared quite ‘normal’ if you can call the Dee normal!

I agreed that the waters appeared to be good for us to paddle. So off we shuttled upriver to the Boat Inn. It was going to be a long day. We all safely launched onto the water above the rapids, in quite shallow water.

Approximately 2 hours and about 10 sets of rapids later we made it to Bangor on Dee for a lunch stop. Zoe practised her White water rescue on one of the rapids before lunch. After lunch 2 members had to leave us so we were down to just 4 hardy individuals to continue on to complete the next 14 or so miles. I’d like to say the weather had been kind to us on this leg of the trip as after lunch and about another 4 miles into the trip the heavens opened. 

No further issues on the remainder of the route. The route but we all got muddy on the Egress at Farndon as there is no longer any easy Egress at the Fisherman’s pegs in the car park. Dave made a pot of Tea for us once we were off the water to warm us up.

It was a good paddle though in typical British Summer weather.