Sunday 18 July 2010

Paddling road trip

Eddie, Colin and myself headed off last Friday for a road trip. The aim was to head to Clifden and surf till the Sunday when Clifden hole started working. On the way we decided to stop and have a look at Ballisadare falls. This is a 7metre drop but at this time of year it isn't a brilliant plan to run it as the salmon fishermen at the bottom (paying 100euro a day to fish there) get a bit annoyed if you drop in on the pool.

We decided to head to Easkey instead as there was no real rush to head all the way to Clifden. This turned out to be a very good move with 3ft surf in Easkey. This has to be one of my favourite breaks to surf in Ireland and I was very glad to get a session in here again.
Having finished with Easkey we headed onto Clifden on the Saturday, arriving just as the feature started working. I always find Clifden a big challenge as it is difficult to get into even more so when you have only 1 paddle blade and youre unstable! However I did manage to get some stuff done in it.
A lot of the local Galway paddlers turned up along with a few dubs and then us. There was quite a lot of Current and Ex team paddlers so was nice to see so much talent on the water and pulling big moves. We spent a very wet night camping on the beach with Tom and Paul. Great craic was had all round though, without the van we would have been pretty much screwed. Tom and Paul's tent had blown away during the day so the other 3 of us decided not to bother and sleep in the van.

The next morning we went back to Clifden again for another session before heading home via Easkey again. I unfortunately had to go back to Dublin after this so was forced to go by bus from Sligo across rather than going back to Belfast with the lads.
Really can't wait to get another road trip done though, hopefully I will manage to get another one done in the next few weeks.

















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