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Aire Waves
Leeds Canoe Club Blog. We paddle... lots!
Airewaves used to be Leeds Canoe Club's magazine letting people know what the club was upto. Its quite hard work pulling together a publication letting people know what the club is doing and publishing dates in advance is always hard as things tend to change. Step forth the blog.. Push button publishing for the masses. So here is the idea a few people in the club take it in turns to write up trips and talk about things in the club.
Sunday, September 04, 2005Liffey Decent 2005
Dublin, the Guiness, the craic, and the Liffey. We went over to Dublin for the 2005 Liffey decent. On the decent weekend the Liffey is flooded by the Irish Electric company to increase the flow of water across the 17 Mile, 12 Weir course. This year Leeds Canoe Club entered 4 Topo Duos and 1 individual into the race. We were amoung 1000 paddlers on the river. At the start of the race everyone has to walk about a mile or so to get to the put in and then paddle another mile upstream to the holding area for the start lines.
As we waited we met up with lots of paddlers from Ireland interested to see us come over from Leeds. Then we were called down to the start line. When the horn when we were off. Off to
straffen weir. As we got on I saw around 20 frog men swim down the weir, on the bridge over looking the weir a crowd had gathered and they were looking quite hungry!
I think Nick and Owen were over first, then Dave and Steve, Jeanie and Myself and then Andy and Gill. Simon Triger was in a different class so was about 20 mins behind us. As we went over we saw boats and bodies everywhere. The paddling was hard and the jungle section was full of little twists and turns and canadians trying to get past.They were waiting for us
Nick, Owen, Dave and Steve had done the liffey the year before and had talked up some of the weirs, espically they "V" shaped weirs. These needed to be approched dead on otherwise you were swept left of right down the "V". We managed to get down both the "V" weirs ok but Dave and Steve didn't manage do well. They swam on one of the weirs although they didn't actually get a chance to roll back up before the frog men had them.
We finished in 3hrs 33mins which wasn't too bad for our first time. I then collasped on the Lawn at the Dublin rowing club as I recovered.
In the evening was they party. We all piled into Taxi's and went over to a bar for a few more Guinesses and some food. Some of the pictures from the race were shown on the screens in the bar. Dave and Steve made it on the show. Later we went on the rampage for food and headed back to the campsite.
Oh Steve's car which was a little on the ill side in the Alps again died on the way back to Leeds.
