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A postcard from Wouter, scrimping and saving like the rest of us for the trip..
Wouter and (enthusiastic) crew.
So guys just a quick postcard from where I am spending my first month of my free time. I am working up in the central highlands for a company called Splash WhiteWater Rafting, in order to earn the money to even go to Kygyzstan. The weekends are spent on the River Tummel when they put the release on for the rafts to come down. Not quite as exciting as some of the rain fed gems here in Perthshire but it’s the best for it’s consistency.
Apart from the usual weekends on the tummel and the duckie trips on the Tay in the week, I have managed be over the west coast working at a raft race on the river Awe, a bit of climbing and absailing, canyoning in Keltney Burn, and some work here in the office.
We did have a bit of rain before this seemingly endless drought we are in for the moment, and managed to kayak the Lyon, which is simply a beautiful little river not so far away. I paddled the upper Tummel too which was good but the amount of flies was just ridiculous. It has a great put-in where you choose to launch either at the top or the bottom of the 20 step fish ladder! It’s quite good.
We were lucky last week too when the Clunie power station needed some maintenance and had to release water down the bypass… the middle Tummel. So we managed to kayak a really familiar river, but at medium flows compared to what it can handle in full spate, which is about 1.5 x the Liquid Life boater cross release, with all the rocks covered at zig & zag and some really nice play waves/holes towards the Linn. Try cartwheeling a Jefe!
Giving the Jefe a bit of a run-out.
Stay tuned for a surf-kayak trip to some Indian Ocean coral atolls.