Stuart Reeve posted on November 02, 2009 07:14
Pikey Paddling, it’s the future ! Borrow some dodgy old van, pile all the kit and boats in, drive to the get in, sleep in the van, wake up ready and raring to get on. You can even tarmac some drives on the way home to pay for the trip ! This was how I found myself waking up next to the East Lyn in North Devon at 6.30 ! one Saturday morning. We finally snuck onto the river at 8.00 am (a new club record) to avoid the prying eyes of the house overlooking the river who demands to see written access.
Sitting in a stunning steep sided gorge, it drops 110m in 2 miles, finally ending up in the sea. The water was to low to medium which was about perfect for our trip as the gorge becomes a grade 5 in higher water. We ended up running it at an interesting Grade 4. We set off down some fun rock pool rapids. I managed to capsize on the first one but came up again. We snuck past a second house and got out to inspect the first technical rapid.
Once through this section we arrived at the start of the gorge proper. This was our introduction to scrabbling along slippery rocks trying to break your leg to inspect rapids in North Devon.
The section demanded a drop through some rocks with pinning potential then a run through a boulder garden and a finally a meaty drop. Darren ran first and got out at the bottom. I then ran it and opted for the chicken run to the left of the pinny rocks. Stu came down last but unfortunately got turned around by the pinny rocks and then capsized in the boulder garden, rolled back up and ran the drop backwards. A capsize in the bottom of the drop was righted with a roll and he was out.
The next 6 foot drop was no problem. We then scouted the best bit of the gorge. A drop leading into a boily rock slide ending up with a 7 foot drop. Stuart ran this first and did a text book job breaking out half way down. I ran it next and enjoyed some down time in the drop. Darren then ran it and decided to up the ante by incorporating a wave wheel half way down. He managed to right himself for the final drop. We continued downwards over a long grade 4 rapid with a grand finale of a fantastic long continous grade 3 boulder garden with a steep gradient.
We eventually were paddling rapids past houses into Lynmouth with all the tourists looking on. I managed one final pin of many, complete with expletives to entertain the onlookers and we finally headed out of the harbour into the sea. We ended our adventure surfing the swell back into the beach, very weird ! Once I had walked back up to pick up the van and driven back down to LynmouthHarbour, we then spent half an hour pulling everything out of the van as I had lost the keys to it. Eventually I remembered I’d put them down the front of my dry trousers for safe keeping (ladies please note). Once we’d packed the van back up, off we sped off to catch the surf at Ilfracombe and spent 2 hours getting pounded and surfing some big swell in a small secluded cove that was trapping a load of waves.
By Simon Lloyd