River Goyt Loop on 30th December
We met at Life Leisure Pool in Romiley and shuttled the cars down to Chadkirk Country Park car Park. We seal launched into the canal and headed out for the paddle to Marple Viaduct. We met two canal barges along the way and kept well over to the right to keep clear as they passed.
The strong winds blew one of the old trees down less than 10m in front but fortunately, it fell away from the canal and took out several smaller trees on its way down.
The Hyde tunnel was about 300m long and we swiftly paddled through hoping that no other narrow boats were coming from the opposite direction. At the Viaduct, Andy wanted to see who was most nimble at getting out of their boats, it clearly was not me.
We stretched our legs and looked over the viaduct down to the river below. We carried the kayaks down the path to the river and slid in one by one. Ben had a close encounter with the tree on the right but survived. The water was at a good level at 0.6m on the gauge and covered all the rocks. We paddled down the rapids one by one and played at a little play wave on river left.
We dropped in on the Manchester Canoe Club Slalom site and tried to carve our way through a few of the gates. The bottom tongue had a dead man’s eddy on river right as all the current divides at a rock wall and circulates to the left and right.
We soon came across the get-out and the remains of the old weir which now has a new green bridge above it at Chadkirk. At this level, it had a good, safe play wave underneath it. This gave easy spins and surfed well. After playing for about 10 minutes we exited on river left and carried over the bridge to the road. As we were walking Keith was attacked by a small Jack Russel that belonged to a family sitting at the picnic tables.
We collected the cars from the car park and loaded up kayaks before returning to the swimming pool to pickup the remaining cars. This was an enjoyable trip with lots of interest and would make an ideal first trip for any paddler wanting to improve their experience.