River Teith – 8/4/2006

Sometimes indecision has benefits. Amy was looking for some sort of adventure for the weekend. Bram was away. Lucas was jonesing for a paddle but equivocating about the compatibility of schoolwork with a full weekend away. I was itching for a go at snowboarding. The decision? Responsibility be damned, let’s do both.

The path out of town was comical, but worked out eventually. Amy wanted to borrow a club boat, which meant she had to submit her membership application, which meant she had to show her NUS card, which she had forgotten at home when she arrived to pick us up. She blocked the road for us to load gear and annoyed one of our neighbors. The amount of gear in the car meant that we needed a little time and creativity to fit ourselves in properly. We drove to her house, got the card, got to the boatshed about 15 minutes late for meeting Derek. Thankfully, Derek had forgotten. He turned up a few minutes later unaware. Then we drove back to her house for the last of the forgotten gear, one last goodbye to Bram and set out without a destination.

Lack of rain meant not too many options were available, so the first adventure was to find Stirling Canoes. Amy bought a helmet there. Then we had to decide on the river. The options I came up with were the Tay and the Teith, familiar runs, as well as the Upper Orchy, a new run. Without a guaranteed shuttle, the Orchy might be tricky. Without much water, it would be bony, too. Lucas picked the familiar Teith for our paddling portion of the weekend adventure.

While we were getting breakfast and assembling the Pakboat, Amy drove her car down to the get out and hitched back up fast enough that the boat was not totally ready to be on the water. We were on the water soon enough. Lucas had put himself in the stern position out of habit, so I paddled bow and took lots of pictures. Since we were such a small group, Amy ended up the subject of many a picture. Amy told me that she likes me much better without the camera.

This trip was our first Saturday paddle on the Teith. The guidebook warned about its popularity as a fishing river and they weren’t kidding. The nice, bright and sunny day meant that at times we had more maneuvering to do to avoid the fishing lines than the rocks. Sadly, we had to miss a few fun play spots on the river because others thought those were fun fishing spots. The second half of the river was not nearly so popular, so it wasn’t too terrible to miss the early stuff. We stopped for lunch at a bend in the river where there was a dynamic eddy line for Amy to practice stern squirts. She was a little squirmish about going over until the second or third one flipped her completely. Then, no big deal. I had fun taking pictures, and got a sequence of paddle up, squirt, flip, roll and drip dry.

After lunch, we passed a few more fishermen and then had the river to ourselves. Er, almost. It was us and the sheep. Lots of sheep, including lots of cute baby sheep. Baaaa.

We had fun catching eddies and surfing, without all the fishing lines to get in the way. The Teith was running low to medium so there were plenty of little waves and not too many rocks in the way. We were able to surf across one wave in front of a big rock and then catch the eddy behind the rock.

Not too much longer, after all of the baby sheep were photographed and Amy was thoroughly sick of being photographed, we reached the last rapid and then the get out. All in all, it was a lovely day on the river. When we set out for Scotland, Lucas thought our home river would be the Tay, but lately it seems like the Teith is home base.