Today, with a group from UUJ we were planning to paddle the Benburb, but having got there early it was obvious that it was actually too high to run with the group we had. Time for a quick jaunt over to run the Upper Bann from Banbridge instead.
The river wasn't huge - but at least had enough water to paddle down it with almost no scrapey bits at all - which is definitely a bonus.
For this trip I paddled the open boat, joined with India (age 9) on her first river run. She was great paddling through the rapids and stoppers, and soon was begging to start surfing the weirs. Luckily there were a few very good surf spots today.
The only slight mis-hap was on one of the slides near the end of the river. We ran down it fine, but at the bottom hit a rock which threw us forward into the boat, putting me into the thwart and India into the front seat. Despite the pain, both of us landed in a low brace and managed to right the almost capsized boat. Very impressive for her first time down a river.
The unbelievable highlight of the day was to go to Sonya. Somehow, she worked her magic at the bottom of a weir, chatted to a fisherman about his flies (or some other fishing mumbo jumbo) - and came away with a free brown trout. And who said paddlers and fishermen don't get along?
