Easter 2005 and a significantly dry winter had resulted in the much anticipated rain needed for the annual season of white water paddling to be anything far from adequate! Months previously we had planned to leave the South East of England and head to the Scottish Highlands to kayak the white water rivers on offer there. Surprisingly, Scotland had also fallen victim to the same dry winter we had experienced in the South with the majority of their rivers at their summer levels. A contingency plan had to be devised before we embarked on our 11 hour road trip to Scotland. That plan was to paddle a significant length of the River Spey in open boats, camping en-route.
Saturday morning arrived and we headed to Aviemore. Our boats were unloaded from the car roofs and packed full of equipment. We were a group of 3 open canoes, with a couple in each; Gideon/Clare, Dan/Cara, and Nick/Lara and dog. Saturday night we’d be camping alongside the river so the obligatory car shuttle (moving the cars from the start to the end) took a while as a distance equivalent of 2 days paddling had to be covered. Lara, myself and dog remained with the boats where a number of locals expressed an interested in what we were doing.
Eventually the shuttle was complete and one by one we launched our open boats and set off down the River Spey, aided by a gentle current. The stretches of the Spey we were paddling were not particularly challenging with nothing more than some low grade 2 rapids, however, for Cara and myself, this would be our first rapids in a heavily loaded open boat! It wasn’t long before the first of these rapids was upon us, negotiated successfully and then behind us!
One of the things that I personally could not get used to was the friendly nature of the fishermen. They were equally accommodating to us as we were to them, something that is seldom seen by fishermen in England. I didn’t know until our return to England, that the River Spey is one of Scotland’s premier salmon fishing rivers and fisherman can pay up to £500 a day to fish it!
As Saturday drew to a close we found our camping spot, a small farmers field beside the river. The air was damp and cold and we were all tired. Our first priority was to erect tents and get our camping stoves fired up so we could get some warm fluids (cuppa tea) and some nosh inside us!
The local farmer briefly visited us and said we could have a fire. He’d also brought along some wooden boards for us to burnt. Unfortunately, all the wood was very damp, including the logs we’d collected and it took considerable time before we dried it enough for it to burn. Eventually we had a roaring fire and we all gathered around its welcoming warmth – Scotland in Easter tends to be a little chilly – before retreating to our tents!
Sunday morning came and after a very chilly night in an inadequate sleeping bag our gas stove was fired up and a piping hot cup of tea and fried breakfast was presented to Cara, still deeply buried inside her sleeping bag!
Shortly afterwards our campsite was packed up and loaded back into our open boats. We then joined the river Spey and continued on our way.
That evening we re-joined our cars that had been shuttled from Aviemore. Nick, Lara, Cara and myself opted to return to the cottage we were renting for the week, leaving Clare and Gideon to camp once again alongside the river. Nick and Lara loaded all of their boating equipment including boats as they didn’t intend to paddle the following day.
After a comfortable night sleep in our cottage, Cara and I drove back to the previous days egress point where we met up with Gideon and Clare. Nick and Lara had other plans so we were now down to 2 boats! On arrival we carried the boats the short distance (it felt like miles) back to the waters edge. Clare then handed us the map and insisted we determine where we’d go. Probably determined to make it to the coast, I decided that Fochabers would be the next best destination (we didn’t have any tide information with us so did not want to risk paddling against an incoming tide).
After shuttling the cars to the end we once again set off. Our boat was significantly lighter after leaving all of our camping equipment in the cottage which meant we were a bit more ambitious with the small rapids that followed. Needless to say we ended up doing some of them backwards!
After a couple of days off (if you call climbing Ben Nevis a day off) we decided to return to the Spey and paddle another stretch. This was to be our last day of paddling before we embarked on our epic drive back to the South Coast so a moderate paddle was envisaged. We decided to paddle a stretch of the Spey upstream from where we started on Saturday.
After a short car journey we arrived at Newtonmore, unloaded our boats a moved them to the river edge. I remained with the boats whilst Cara, Gideon and Clare shuttled the cars to the end (Kincraig).
This far upstream the Spey was much narrower and because of the low water levels was very shallow in places. However, the camping equipment was no longer required so our boats were now very lean! The main theme of the day was to see who could choose the better line, that is, the line that didn’t require us to get out of the boats and carry them over the shallows!
Because of the more relaxed pace of the final days paddling it gave us a unique opportunity to experiment with sails! There was a bit of competition as Clare and Gid, Cara and myself jostled for position in a sailing race down the river. This climaxed when we arrived at Loch Insh and to our amazement the wind was on out backs! Clare and Gideon made off at a rapid pace, however Cara and I started to struggle as our much larger sail was catching too much wind causing us to almost capsize on a number of occasions! Fortunately the wind picked up further and Clare and Gideon took sympathy on us and joined us.
After struggling to sail the two boats as one by holding on to each other, we decided to lash the boats together to form a more stable platform. It worked and what a sight! Clare hanging of the back trying to steer, Gideon trying to keep his hands on the large sail, myself holding on to Gideon and Cara trying to stabilise and bail out water from the whole platform. To be honest I never realised that an open boat could move so quickly!
It wasn’t long before we had crossed the loch and heading towards a large sand bank. The river was off to our left and the corrective rudder control had little effect against the thrust being generated from the sail! We ultimately ended up high and dry in fits of laughter! This was probably one of the highlights of the entire trip!