Stuart Reeve posted on November 09, 2009 05:40
Croydon Active Paddlers quite often heads up to Holme Pierre Pont for the LASER weekend. Some of you might think that it sounds like some sort of rave but LASER actually stands for London And South East Region. That doesn’t stop us from having a party though.
The beauty of this weekend is that the levels start off very low so it is within the ability of every member of the club. You may only want to paddle on the course for an hour or two but there is always the River Trent if you fancy doing a flat water paddle.
The levels gradually start to build up during the day on Saturday and everyone was partnered up with a more experience paddler / chaperon to help guide them down the course, show them the error of their ways and in some cases rescue them from the ravages of the looping pool.
The course starts out on the River Trent where you start off running down a slope where there is a stopper at the bottom which is known as the inlet gate. This feature can be quite sporty if you decide to play on it but can easily be powered over with a well placed paddle stoke or two.
You then carry on down the course which has gentle grade II drops that are ideal for practicing ferry glides. The main hazards here are the numerous slalom poles which seem perfectly placed to cause a hindrance.
When you get to a bridge across the course, this marks the drop into the looping pool. Keep straight to power over the stopper and then either break out in to the eddy on either side if you wish to stop and play or carry on down.
Next up is the plughole which is easy to avoid but quite forgiving if you do decide to stop for a surf. The course then splits round and island before converging above the last feature on the course which is a good place to side surf (even in a duo).
Then it is a case or jumping out to walk all the way back up the course and do it again.
It isn’t normally long before the Topo duo is brought out to battle the course but being CAP, we like to spice things up by getting both paddlers to face each other so that the person in front has to back paddle and can’t really see what they are about to be launched into.
Saturday night is normally spent putting the world to rights and it isn’t long before Sunday arrives and the wet kit is donned again as we go back to the course to tame our demons from the previous day.
The levels are normally higher on the Sunday which makes everything a little more interesting. Before long though, everyone starts to flag and it is a case of packing everything away so that the drivers can chauffeur the rest of the club home as they sleep off the ravages of the weekend.
The course has been redesigned since this write up so look forward to an updated version in the forthcoming months.