Back to Hurley

This weekend I had a wedding to go to on the Saturday, back where my family home is. This is only a 20 minute journey from Hurley, where I really learnt to kayak. Not that I am any good at playboating, but getting munched by the hole on four gates, and continuously going over on the wave gave me a pretty good roll. So knowing that I had to be home on the Saturday for a wedding, I looked at the forecast and level at Hurley before I left on Friday. 3 gates and 0 radials, this looked promising with the weather the way it was, and how there was rain forecast, I thought that the level may hold and I may be able to be reunited with the beautiful weir. So I put Sophie (my Vision 56 bigfoot) into Joanna (My Saxo 1.1 Desire) as well as the rest of my kit and headed back home.

Sunday morning came and I was feeling tired after the wedding as it was a late night, even though I hadn’t had anything to drink really. I made sure that I was driving to make sure of this. This is because Andy Francis and I are on a diet to lose weight and gain a six pack, but that is for another time. So I lazily got out of bed and put Sophie back into Joanna and headed down the M4 to Hurley. I was there in next to no time, luckily there were no Sunday drivers on the roads at this time. Praying that it was still on three gates, on arrival I asked two other boaters what she was on. Without saying a thing, one of them held up three fingers and stared blankly at me, which at the time I didn’t think anything of, but on reflection seems rather rude. I would have given him a piece of my mind, but I was too excited to care at the time. With the weather looking hopeful, I kitted up and headed down to the river.

Having not been in Sophie for a while, and not been to Hurley in even longer (about 2 years) I was feeling excited and somewhat twitchy back in the playboat. Getting to the weir the level was nice, quite a high 3 gates, that made the center wave nice and powerful. I was at first quite sketchy, not making life easy for myself when getting over the shoulder between gates 1 and 2, but soon got back into the flow. Well at least the flow of being slightly better than absolutely crap. Last time I was at Hurley I was just getting the hang of sticking a blunt on the right side, and this is where I continued. Getting used to the boat, flat spinning and surfing, I started practicing my blunts. After getting my timing right, I was hitting some relatively big air from what I am used to, and getting some nice blunts. My consistency wasn’t brilliant mind, I’m not always getting the stroke in just before getting air, but when I did it was working.

 Some cheeky snaps of me one the wave. The quality isn't brilliant as I took my GoPro Hero 2 home with me, but forgot the Anti-Fog inserts I bought before I went to France. So even though it was on the bank, the thing still fogged up. I do have to say, despite thinking that they weren't gonna work well, the Anti-Fog inserts did the trick when I was in the Alps.

There were quite a few people down Hurley on Sunday, and to my surprise a bit of trim too. Meeting some lads from Swindon as well as a few from Reading Uni, I was giving some pointers to one of the girls. Not that I am any sort of teacher of playboating, but just some tips that I was once told by a bloke when I used to go, back in my school days. I was there for about two and a half hours, just working on blunting, trying to get my left side working as well, and called it a day as I was messing up and losing concentration. There were about 12 to 15 people there whilst I was, and just as I was leaving another group turned up, this time consisting of 4 or 5 girls which lit up my day a bit more. Unfortunately it was just as I was leaving, but then this could be a good thing, because getting schooled by some hot girls would have been pretty demoralizing.

The weather was cracking, and the boating was as fun as I always remembered. I would recommend that if the weather stays as it is, then Hurley is a great place to be on a weekend in the summer.