Tuesday 18 November 2014

A European Summer (Part 1)

After finishing my final university exams I flew out to Valsesia to join the Pyranha Team Van for its annual European Tour. I had heard that levels were low, but landing in Italy in the pouring rain realised we were in for some high water! This meant we could get on some of the classic rivers at sick levels, firstly the Sesia provided some bouncy big volume, then we headed to the Sorba slides. With plenty of water this felt more like Norway than the classic low volume of Valsesia!


The annual Valsesia River Festival kicked off with some good fun racing and a big party. With Baino winning the boater cross on his 21st birthday we were certainly celebrating, perhaps a little too hard! The sun came out, and after a quick run of the Middle Sermanza (one of my all time favorite sections) we began the drive to Slovenia.


Arriving in Slovenia we were all grateful to Blaz from Positive Sport for providing us with some awesome accommodation, complete with a proper kitchen and shower! We were all stunned by the scenery, both on and off the river. The Soca is the most fun river you can imagine! The water is a brilliant blue color, and every rapid has a choice of boulder moves.


Over the next few days we managed to smash a few laps of the siphon canyon, meeting some of the local kayakers in the process. This section has a fearsome reputation but is actually great fun, as long as you are in the right place!


Our final day was the day of the Soca Boater X and of course the after party! Limerick University canoe club made sure the party continued until the early hours, leaving us feeling fresh and ready to go for the long drive to Croatia the next day...

After picking up some new team members we headed over to Croatia with mixed feelings about what we would find. We had been told at the party before that recent floods had washed land mines into the rivers. We were greeted by some local raft guides, who fed us some of the local Rakia, shortly before telling us that drinking it sometimes made you go blind! Luckily we met some local kayakers who showed us around the best rivers in the area, with not a land mine in sight.


We headed towards the border with Bosnia, and after a short tense discussion about driving with no shirt on we were given a police escort to the river! We were shown to an awesome set of waterfalls, starting with a 50 footer (I swam), followed by a great set of rapids. The river formed the border between Croatia and Bosnia, despite very clear instructions from our friendly police officer not to go to Bosnia, some members of our team still nearly managed to get arrested.


All too soon our time in Croatia was over. Although we had to say goodbye to our new Croatian friends, we were excited to be back on the road. We were headed to Austria and had heard levels were big!

Check out some of the videos from Italy, Slovenia and Croatia here: Slovenia, Italy, Croatia

Written by Barny Prees with photos by David Bain, Barny Prees and Oisin Mchugh