River Tweed Megabimble - 17/12/2006

The Edinburgh Kayak Club's Christmas Night Oot at Viva Mexico, the Malt Shovel and the Bongo Club was followed by a Hair of the Dog Bimble on the River Tweed. Ali, Robin, Alan and Magnus showed up with kayaks. As far as open canoes went, Charlie paddled his Mobile Adventure Symphony and Amy paddled the club's Old Town Discovery with me. With all the rain, the Tweed was moving. We reckoned the Lyne to Peebles run would take about five minutes, so we headed upstream to a random spot on the side of the road to Stobo that looked reasonable enough for access. Despite the flush-like conditions, the River Tweed offered us our first proper bimble of the winter.

We launched probably around 12-12:30. Robin took advantage of a first descent opportunity in the wee burn at the get-in. Amy and I attempted a ferryglide from the burn and got flushed downstream instead. Amy and I couldn’t set the angle properly from the burn and the flush of water wasn’t going to let us fix it afterward.

Flush was fine, we caught up with the rest of the group within seconds and caught a river left eddy along the bank. I violated the first rule of canoeing, sort of. Thou shalt not teach thy significant other how to paddle translates to tandem canoeing as thou shalt not tell thy tandem partner what to do. In my defence, I was learning, too. Amy and I caught lots of eddies as we learned how to edge the boat, hold the edge and not crash into the banks instead of turn into the eddies. Gradually we got it figured out and our breakouts and breakins became much more smooth. We chose our eddies and hit nearly all of them. Amy took to paddling on the right pretty quickly, which I expect will make Bram even more jealous.

We stopped for lunch at the normal get in (Lyne) for a Tweed bimble to Peebles. Amy shared her wee chair with me and we had a lovely view of the river as we lunched. After lunch, we paddled on through the section that I remembered.

Past Neidpath Castle, we found an awesome surfing wave. Everybody saw it and everybody lunged for it. We spun our nearly 17 feet of canoe and paddled forward frantically to slow ourselves down. It worked beautifully and the surf was magic. At one point, I think Alan, Robin and Charlie were sharing the wave with us.

Further downstream, we found surf wave with a much more convenient eddy beside it. The wave was smaller so the community surf wasn’t an option. We took turns with Alan and Robin playing. The nice thing about big, tubby boats is they’re slow to do anything. Slow to slow down means slow to be kicked off a wave. Inertia has its perks!

The second wave was the last good surf of the day. Our bimble took us into Peebles through a park, so we had spectators as we inadvertently beached our boat during a break out. The last rapids of the day were at the weir in Peebles. The water was high enough that it was easily runnable. We were last to run, choosing a line left of centre through a friendly stopper. Amy got splashed as we bounced over it. Ali had a look of horror on her face as we caught the eddy where she sat on river left. She was expecting 10 tonnes of canoe to come slamming into her and for that, we let her down. We parked the canoe very gently beside her and helped her out. Amy hopped out and beached the canoe so I didn’t even have to get my feet wet. Bram would be so jealous.

At the getout, everybody was jealous of my changling cocoon. Before the drivers departed, Robin asked if there was room for two. We found room – he got an arm hole – so then Ali asked if there was room for three. Charlie and Amy took pictures of the resulting sight. Then Charlie decided it was a perfect opportunity to run behind us and kick me in the butt.

It felt great to be paddling tandem and paddling stern no less. Better still that I (along with too much alcohol the night before) actually made Amy feel tired by the end of the trip. Hopefully more open canoe adventures will await this winter!