WWPF 2012! What a cracking weekend :)
I travelled up to Glasgow a bit early & went for a cheeky few beers out in the west end which was really great, but Friday morning rolled round, packed up the van and drove up toward the fort. We stopped off on the way up to have a gander at the Etive, which was arguably low so it seemed(!), and found the first bunch of people who had travelled up for Wet West and were cooking some sort of brown stew on a stove in the horizontal rain in drysuits at the river bank...awesome. Gotta love boaters.
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| Horizontal rain, winner! |
AAaaannyway, the first night for everyone inevitably, meet up with people you know and catch up on boating etc over numerous beers and in this case, in front of a bunch of kayaking DVDs which were on show, what genius idea that was! I didnt really know hardly anybody so i spent the evening meeting people which was hilarious! The BA club in the fort was amazing, lady running it was wicked and we all had a good evening drinking and watching paddle porn and chatting about stuff, and i found another broken person (Martin) which cheered me right up :)
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| BA Club just getting warmed up |
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| Euan and Martin being ANGRYYYYY |
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| Paddle porn on projector...sweet! |
Hangover was less than pretty on Saturday morning when I was dragged out of bed to drive to Invermoriston to help the guys out set the tents up.... entirely worth it but dear god a bacon sandwich wasnt going to help anything that morning even if i had one! Spent all morning poking each other and laughing at what a pair of wimps we were being... hehehe.
Paddlers didnt start to rock up until mid morning anyways, we were all set up and raring to go by about 8 - first shuttle at ten, it wasnt a very full bus until about half past! Then the whole campsite woke up and we were inundated with people and boats!
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| Shuttle bunnies! |
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| Hangover trail.... |
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| Des Mes, ZET, IR and SCA |
Eventually, after spending a bit of time helping out and generally hanging around, I felt human enough to go for a wander down to the river and take some photos anc caught some carnage which was awesome - got a couple of corkers (full album links at the bottom),
Upper Moriston.......
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| Someone had a wicked van! |
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| Dave taking the top drop on Upper Moriston |
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| Middle Rapid - this is the slide i like! |
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| The rock where all the cheering came from! |
Many Shuttles later, everyone made their way to the Lower Moriston....
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| Should i run the top drop on the lower.... |
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| ...when it looks like this?! |
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| Bottom Playhole :D |
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| Gunbarrel |
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| This man was loving life right then! |
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| Surely not in a creeker?! Think its a stomper?! |
So the day was a success all in all, we had swim above the top drop on the Upper, and a couple of broken paddles and stuff but that was it, no major injuries and no misbehaviour and upsetting the locals with parking carnage so it was alllllll good :) That night in the BA club was awesome, the atmosphere was great, the beer was flowing, and Mark did his bit doing the raffle which was funny....
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| Someone gave that man a microphone?!?! |
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| ... |
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| Far as i saw, this the sole dressing up effort ! |
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| Dave + old bucket of tickets, not so good for James or his pint! |
Anyway, lots of beer consumed, before retiring at about 1am to bed - took about 2 hours to actually get into bed and Mark and I were pretty jolly and managed to giggle our way into the B&B with Dave telling us off.... :S ... hope we didnt wake anybody!
The final slog, the Garry, up at 730, out by 8, we trundled down to the Shinty club to set up tents and wait for everyone to show up, the smell of the lady cooking bacon all morning had me raging all day but i again, went down to the river to photograph the others and be jealous....
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| Haydn!? in boating gear?! |
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| New Jackson Rock Star and looping, little drooling here. |
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| Crowded top eddy, good chat :) |
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| Charlie vs the Rock Star....BOOM! |
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| Haydn picking on poor females... hehe |
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| Other females picking on Haydn....Well, it was Steve! |
And after a few minutes of watching, Dave couldnt resist getting his boat out so i followed him down as much as i can, figure i owe it to him seeing as all these photos are all from his camera!!..
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| Top Wave |
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| Top Wave
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| Top Wave
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| Top Wave
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| Top Wave
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| King of the wave with Bruce... |
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| ...where'd he go?! (under the boat i think :S) |
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| Bottom waves |
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| Bottom waves
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| Bottom waves
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| Paddle back to the Shinty Club in the sun... |
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| Shinty Club, not a bad setting is it! |
Alllll this followed by packing up, and making my way with a passed out paddler in the passenger seat and a load of wet kit in the back, to Glasgow to completely KO for the night. Beer drunk, rivers paddled, good boaters, good carnage, no hassle, great event, very little sleep and about the 4th hangover in a row....what a cracking weekend!
Roll on WWPF 2013!
Facebook Photos here (subset)
Google+ (all 680 photos!)
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