Trips throughout the year

We do a lot of trips throughout the year, hooray! And they are all brilliant. River trips,  polo tournaments, surf trips, star skills training, freestyle, wildwater, slalom…..

The first fantabulous trip of the autumn term is Stu and Andy’s Wales adventure for Freshers. This is a river trip at the weekend at the end of week 1. You’ll be staying in a luxurious camping barn in the beautiful North Wales countryside. You’ll be paddling very nice rivers and meeting everyone, new faces and old. To sign up now for this trip, go to Freshers Fair and get your name on the list!

Then we continue with either day trips or whole weekend trips nearly every weekend of the term. Check out the calendar on the front page to see exactly when these will be.

Trips in Autumn term include:

Some of the other trips planned for the rest of this year:

As well as weekend trips, we have day trips to closer locations: The Dee, Tryweryn, Burrs, Stanley Embankment, South lakes, Anglesey Surf. 

River trips - on a typical club weekend, we’ll do 3 to 4 rivers, with at least two of these suitable for everyone. Early in the term, we tend to focus on easier rivers, and then gradually increase the skill needed for later trips. Nevertheless, each weekend club trip will generally include both rivers that are “suitable for all, including beginners” as well as optional rivers chosen to be more challenging for the better paddlers.

* Events marked with a single asterisk are inter-university Club competitions. If you want to be included in the teams for this, see your polo / WWR / slalom officers. For slalom, rodeo and WWR, these events are open to anyone who is confident on grade II+/III- rivers, which will be you if you go on all the trips. For polo, you need to join in practice in the pool - try it out on Thursdays and Wednesdays, it is very fun.

♦ Events marked with a diamond (Scotland trip and Alps trip) are rather harder trips involving more challenging rivers. Or rather, not involving any easier rivers. Each year we run a trip to Scotland and a trip to the Alps, aimed at the better paddlers in the club. It is certainly very possible for freshers new to paddling in October to build up their skill-set sufficiently within the year to go on the Scotland (Easter) and Alps (Summer) trips, quite a people few do - it really depends a lot on how quickly your individual skills progress, and how many trips you go on through the rest of the year. If you don’t go to Scotland or the Alps during the first year, don’t worry, the rivers don’t go away, save it for the next year!

For most club trips, we take the university minibus as well as a number of private cars. Typical costs are around £35 for a weekend or £15 for a day trip - price includes transport, accommodation, equipment use, supper and breakfast (weekend trips). As you can see, this is the cheapest you will ever do an adventure sport weekend in your life, so make the most of it. BUSA competitions are subsidized by the university and so cost even less.

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