Nor(th)way!

It was the middle of May. I was so damn sick of watching all the whitewater rivers on the internet, just with the feeling to break out again for another trip. Even though that the year till May wasn`t so bad for me as a normal employee. A few days in Austria, about one week in Galicia / Portugal and one week in Switzerland. But at this time I knew that I was caught in Germany during the Teva Race and the Straight Down Striit. Believe me, my mood rised in July after booking the flight to Oslo, where my buddy Thilo and I met the Norwegian locals and their friends. The plan was to run as much classics as possible in ten days. So we were pretty fired up. Arrived at the airport of Oslo our plans changed quickly after getting in contact with the Norwegians, Canadians and Dutchies.

The new route was simply to describe in two words: Go North!

We followed the interesting mission to head up to the artic circle and leave the well known rivers of the popular whitewater guidebook in the south to check out some little-known (only by Norwegians, Finnish and Russians) and maybe unknown river-sections.

The north is not a five star hotel facility. Everything depends of the mood of the weather. But if you hit the right time frame, the north will blow your mind. It is the combination of the surrounding, the loneliness, the midnight sun with 24h of daylight and of course rivers, rivers, rivers. Ah - and fucking huge mosquitoes! Just have a look from your way to the valleys right and left and you can find more and more fantastic whitewater.

In those ten days we only scratched the surface. There are plenty of rivers left to discover. It was just the beginning. You will find beautiful sections with huge slides, falls with drop and pool characters, some are fair some are tricky embedded in gorges or open landscapes. Maybe you get rewarded with a trip in a gorge, eagles gliding above your head yelling at each other. So take your time and go up north! One thing is left to say, watch out for your back and don’t miss the right lines of the slides. Your back will give you thanks.

Big thanks to Mariann Saether for helping me out with these wonderful photos. (After my loss of technical equipment.)

Alex Rodegro

Nookie Team Rider

Big Glitter Day?

Once a year the strange underwater folk of our paddling community all gather in themiddle of our fine country to crown the king of concrete!

The sun always shines on an August bank holiday, so it’s a perfect time for squirt boaters from all over the UK to show off they’re glittery composite boats. OK, so this year it was raining and blustery but the sun came out long enough for us to get together to crown the 2010 King of Concrete. The formula is quite simple, he who sinks the most walks away with the crown…

This sounds odd, by sinking I mean mystery move. A mystery move is a special move you can do in an ultra low volume kayak called a squirt boat. You can key into the currents in white water and sink with the flow. It’s harder than it sounds!

Saturday was a little shaky (especially on my part!) with the locals moaning about some bubbles going missing? But some got on with it anyway West Country bumpkin Mav showed off his new glow in the dark boat by hitting a 10 second mystery in the top pool! For all the Old Skool squirt guy’s this is great news – yes the top pool is back on form, as long as you can find the bubbles – apparently?

But being squirt boaters the rest of the day was sacked off for some mystery based fun and general laziness

So determined to actually get the competiton nailed on Sunday and with our competition heads on we headed off to the pub & a curry. I think we were all safely tucked up in bed by 2am?

Sunday, an early 1pm start bought the start of the competition, 6 rides in the new Pyramid pool, 3 with the flow, 3 cutting back. Mystery move times totalled together = longest time under water wins!

Chris Jones, showed off his local boy skills to take the crown totalling 58 seconds in 6 rides! Tom Bailey bagged the longest ride 13.4 seconds.

We had a load of fun, if you want to have a go or just want to dust off that old squirt boat it’ll all be happening again next year, same place, same weekend…

Thanks to Chris Jones for organising the event. Thanks to UK freestyle / BCU for supplying us with a trophy (Chris hasn’t sent me a picture of it yet, but has assured me it has pride of place above his loo!) and a huge Thank You to the guy’s at Nookie for supplying the prizes – although the squirt guy’s weren’t too sure what to do with the bag marked ATTENTION KAYAK PADDLES, there was a nice mesh pocket for the hand paddles but it wasn’t quite big enough for a squirt boat?

Ben