Liverpool University Canoe Club

Big thanks to Lowri Davies for coming over to Liverpool and telling us about Mongolia and Russia. And big thanks to everyone who helped and who came along to this or previous talks and for making the speakers welcome.

Lowri has rather impressive photos of the sweeping landscapes of Mongolia, and the scary, sharp, gorgey geology of Russia.  

Unfortunately the projector I found turned out not to have a “green” on it. (Sorry). Luckily, Russian geology is mainly red, and water is, obviously, always blue, and Lowri managed to make us quickly forget that the pictures were tinted - if you’d like to see the pictures in their proper colours, go to photobucket. 

The four borders expedition is the second of the “British Universities” expeditions to happen - the first was to Kyrgystan in 2005, and the next expedition will be in 2009 - selection this autumn. The project was born out of the realisation that, although lots of Universities have very active canoe clubs with stuff aimed at most beginner and mid levels, there is often little opportunity for the best whitewater paddlers in a university to get out there and do stuff challenging enough to push them at their own level, and push at the edges of the known paddling world.

For the selected team, really everything was up to them, right from choosing and researching destinations,  raising cash to do it, arranging all the logistics, and carrying out their plans. A team of 8 representing every area of the country.

The two main areas they visited were Mongolia and Russia - the Russian part represents really hard multi day gorges. The Mongolian bit is very much unexplored from a paddling perspective - all new.

The visa problems, alcoholic drivers, the families who befriended them, and the officials who confiscated their stuff formed quite a thread through the trip.  Then there was the  water. Lowri’s pics and talk give us a sense of the scale of the place and of the undertaking that venturing out on continuous IV/V through rather sharp rocks presents. Great to hear someone so good at getting across the challenging/uplifting/truly frightening personal experiences involved.

Thanks Lowri for a super talk!

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