Liverpool University Canoe Club

In association with Blame Dave productions, i’ve made a few movies based around a years paddling with a good bunch of waterholics.  The Premiere will be 10 o clock Thursday 12th June, courtesy of 51 Bagot Street crew… I.e. the night before we head off to the alps. Please feel free to bring alcoholic beverages

As the minibus and associated vans/cars will be leaving ridiculously early on the friday morning, it seems like a very good reason to stay up late and have a few bevvvies to start off the alps trip with a little watery inspiration (and to aid sleeping on said torturous journey south). Also to be decided is who’s team is who’s in the european sweepstreak. Entry into france is automatic qualification!!! 16 teams will be drawn out of the hat… you need to find yourself a drinking buddy (or you’ll be allocated one).

There will be a taster preview video appearing early next week, keep your eyes peeled.

Hi All,

It’s come to that time where you all grumble, and watch the moths fly
from your wallets.

I need the remaining £150 from those listed in my email (also on the forum) for the Alps trip.
Please pay by BACS if possible; into the account in the email (or on your PM if your registered here?!). If not then, I’ll need a cheque or cash asap. I’m about in Liverpool right up until the trip, and will accept Cheques through Andy at the St David’s trip if that’s your next contact with us!

Watch this space for remaining details,

Cheers

Martin

See email from Tammy.

TUES 20TH MAY

Wristbands available from Tammy now:

£8 includes multi-club access, BBQ, fire spinnage, bands etc. Its going to be a big one.

Join this event at facebook and see the whole list of clubs and bands

Photo by AndySq

Thanks heaps to Lloyd of the organisational skills…

Its a pretty standard formula, book somewhere nice for dinner. The girls get to wear formal dresses and look pretty. The guys get to wear suits… and generally not carry it off. We then all leave dinner, head to the Raz via Bar CaVa. And possibly drink more than is sensible.

A lack of gossip this year… can we arrange some random snogging for the Xmas meal? I suggest Finn & Stu

Lots of photos on Facebook (its going to take over the world)
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=85347&id=284101668

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?page=1&aid=34199&id=503371338

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=37635&id=503998022

I am sure there are other albums out there too… My favourite pics.

Thanks Lloyd

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!

Monday March 10th 7.30pm - Lowri Davies - “Canoeing with the Cossacks” - Reading Room - Derby and Rathbone Hall - Greenbank -  £3.50 Adults / Students / Children - Note different venue to other talks - see Maps page for directions to Greenbank

Really looking forward to this talk. We’ll be going out for supper beforehand, great if you can make it to that too, and for drinks afterwards at Kelly’s. Tales of Russian whitewater, should be good, Helen.

“Lowri Davies is best known as one of the World’s top female freestyle kayakers including being European Champion. However, making small boats spin on every axis while flying through the air is not her only paddling proficiency…

Last year Lowri was selected as one of 8 top white water paddlers for the British Universities Expedition to explore some of the wild rivers of Siberia, Mongolia and Kazakhstan. The team paddled big volume multi-day rivers through inescapable gorges and ticked off first descents. However, they faced as many obstacles off the water - guns, bribery, arrests, and car crashes to name but a few! Come and share Lowri’s life and adventures - paddling for 10 weeks in central Asia.”
www.lowridavies.co.uk

Many thanks to Pete Knowles of rivers publishing for coordinating all these speakers to tour the country.

Photos here are borrowed from Fatcatproductions, see more on their blog.

Really enjoyed Si Tapley’s talk, great to see what amazing kinds of whitewater there are in Greenland, and to hear about his trip.

Simon was really down-to-earth about the problems they encountered, and gave us a feeling for what its like to be so isolated from everywhere.

Greenland seems to be  a country that challenges even the best-prepared-plans - Si and Ali’s schedule, carefully measured with Google earth, set an itinerary of some 20 or so rivers, with hiking and sea kayaking to get between them - there is only one real road in Greenland, and it isn’t handily along the side of a river. In fact, that, and any civilisation, is about 200 miles from where they were paddling.

The steep terrain actually meant that they simply could not hike as far each day as they had planned, and they had to scramble every section double as it was just impossible to carry the boats loaded the way they had practiced, given the extreme landscape.

They were surprised that locals seemed not at all interested in what they were doing, in terms of exploration of their country. But folk were kind to them and friendly. And one thing which really saved the day for them was not actually having to sea kayak more than a day - it would have been a hard slog in their creek boats - friendly fishermen, seal hunters and survey boats gave them lifts along the coast, Greenland communities being so connected to the sea.

It was interesting hearing about things that shaped their trip - eventually setting off with only two of them made them have to plan carefully and added a dimension to their decisions about what to do. Despite warnings from others about the dangers of being only 2 small kayakers in a large landscape, they had faith in their own skills and abilities to make their own choices. Their decisions meant they were able to paddle a great deal of super, (and new), white water, incident free.

Some of the closest calls were from the environment - seeing them interview one another after a huge storm swept their tent and all their dry belongings into the fjord gave some idea of the miserable conditions that Greenland can throw at humans. As well as the elements, the insects also seemed to have it in for them - what do they eat when there are no kayakers?
To me, the most amazing footage was of gusting wind blowing a waterfall back up the mountain, so that none of the water was falling into the riverbed - see 3:05 on this Youtube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH8PEw3GVCU

All in all a super evening. It was inspiring to see someone who had the drive and ability  to get out there on basically their student loan and determination, and tick off first descents in a remote location.

If anyone would like to watch the DVD I have a copy - as well as the Greenland stuff, it actually has a whole bunch of other stuff from all over the world -  or you can get one for yourself from

Fatcatproductions.co.uk

I would guess that Si’s paddling buddy did film or media studies or some such, the DVD is very professional.

Big, big thanks to everyone for coming along and especially for making Simon feel so welcome, cheers everyone.

Really looking forward to the next talk too - another student-white-water-type (you probably paddled against her at BUSA). Lowri Davies, currently at Aberystwyth uni, is a well-known top freestyler. In this talk she will be telling us about expedition white water paddling in the far corners of Russia.

“Greenland Whitewater” - Simon Tapley - Wed 20 Feb - 7.30pm - International Lounge - 2nd floor Liverpool Guild of Students - £3.50 (Adults / Students / Children)

LiverpoolKayakTalks.info website.

In the summer vacation of 2007, students Simon Tapley and Ali Marshall undertook the first ever expedition to explore the white water rivers and waterfalls of South West Greenland. Basically, they asked a fisherman to drop them off in the middle of nowhere, and then they explored the granite-and-gnarl rivers of the SW. Luckily, they also got fetched again. Handy for us, as they returned with stunning video footage and photographs for us to enjoy. Simon will be telling us about adventures in this spectacular and unspoilt wilderness.

Like the last talk, we’ll be going to the bar before - the shiny downstairs bar in the student-onion - the talk starts at 7.30pm

photos: fatcatsproductions

 

 Talks website

Big thanks to Dave Manby for a super talk.

Best quote: “Nothing has evolved from Camels.”

Best images of Iran: Iranian nomads moving their goods, tents, children, donkeys and chickens across the Bakhtiari River in Iran, on rafts floated by inflated pigskins. Amazing pictures, making you realise there’s probably no such thing as a “first descent” round those parts. After they’ve got everyone (literally hundreds of people and thousands of animals) across the river, next they forge a path through the snow - with bare feet, obviously.

Was amazing to see this footage of historical journeys, as well as the modern videos of the usual gnarly rapids and multicoloured plastic.”It was really good. Lots of different and strange images and film. Some of them even had people kayaking in. The International cardboard kayaking championships looked an absolute hoot. ” - Si Lewis

Some folk bought his new DVD, which includes the Dudh Khosi footage, the origami race down serpents tail, and some eclectic random bonus footage - so if you fancy watching it, ask around, we’ll have a viewing one eve, and if you would like a copy of the DVD for yourself, visit Dave Manby’s Homepage.

The uni Gilmore bar seems to be rather closed at the moment, so we went to the Union bar in the guild before, and adjourned to the AJ afterwards.

There were folk there from all the different local kayak clubs and climbing groups etc - thanks for coming!

Check the talks website for the next upcoming talks, including:

Wednesday 20th March - Simon Tapley - Greenland Whitewater

Monday 10th March - Lowri Davies - “Canoeing with Cossacks”- Freestyle champion Lowri will be telling us about her adventures the 2007 British Universities “Four Borders” expedition, to the very corners of Russia and Mongolia.

UPDATE: More Info Available here.

Dave Manby, famous kayaker, is going to give a talk at lucc, hooray!

What to expect: Stories about different countries and a lot of mad whitewater-themed things. Pictures of gorges through red Turkish granite and Himalayan boulder-strewn torrents. Kayaks folded to fit them into biplanes, land-rovers mended with string, days trecking to high-altitude put-ins etc. Expedition stories from Iran, Nepal, South America, everywhere really. Excerpts of the recently remastered “Relentless river of Everest” footage - the 1976 first descent of the Dudh Kosi by Mike Jones team. Videos of some sort of weirdo “boater cross” extreme experiment on the Coruh river.

In 1976, Dave Manby was part of a team of students and recent graduate aged folk who carried out the first successful descent of the Dudh Kosi, Everest. Amazing stuff, at a time when Later, on the 1978 K2 Braldu trip, Mike Jones tragically lost his life while going to the aid of a friend. Dave Manby and others organised the original Mike Jones memorial Dee Tours. He’s carried on doing trips to new unpaddled areas of Asia, the middle east and South America, and developed a rafting and kayaking business in Turkey. Some amazing expeditions then and now.

Rachel, Aussie Dave and I heard him speak last year in Manchester, and it was tops

The talk will be in the international lounge at the guild, on the 2nd floor. Tell your friends about it, especially anyone who is into outdoor or adventure sports, caving, climbing etc who might like to hear a talk on extreme expeditions. Admission is £3.50 on the door.

If you can offer any help e.g. putting up posters or setting out chairs etc on the day, then that would be great, please get in touch with Rachel.

It may be possible to purchase copies of Dave’s book Many rivers to run and DVD Dudh kosi: Relentless river of Everest on the evening - both definitely recommended.

Gilmore bar, ground floor of Guild, will be open before and after the talk.

This is the first of a series of whitewater talks throughout the spring, more details from Rachel and Martin soon.