It was early April and I had my sister over from Holland for a visit and needed something to do with her for the weekend. The Club had booked this Whitewater Safety & Rescue Weekend with Wayne Boss to take place on the River Tryweryn, and so I thought this was a perfect excuse to go to Wales and enjoy the beautiful mountain scenery while still spending some time with my friends.

Said and done – off we went… Driving all those miles on a Friday evening is one thing, but keeping up with a gritty old green and yellow van with a mad chauffeur is something else yet. Somehow, I managed not to loose them out of my sight until we all (me and my sister plus Sean, Petra and Andy in the van) arrived ‘safely’ in Llangollen. We were to stay at the Youth Centre again and had just made ourselves comfortable there when Kevin, Sonia and ‘Seal’ arrived, too. The rest of the ‘gang’ would come directly to Bala the next morning.

Sean had decided to get up even earlier than we had to anyway and cooked an English fried breakfast for all eight of us. Nice start to the day… However, to make things a bit more awkward, the centre would have decorators in that day to paint the ceilings, so we had to clear out all our stuff, before driving off to the Tryweryn Centre.

We met the others and the coaches, Wayne and Graeme, in the cafeteria for an introduction to the course – or better said to themselves, trying to instil some trust (or respect?) before taking everybody out to do some work. Safety is better than rescue, so the group started off with an ‘eddy hopping’ exercise. All over the Graveyard section, there were little white poles stuck in the banks marking the most impossible ‘eddies’ as break-out destinations. It was interesting to watch that it took all of them – even the more experienced paddlers - several runs to finally get all or at least most of them. It was hard work, too, but I thought that compared to us “bank people” they had one definite advantage: the hard paddling kept them warm while the weather was not exactly doing its very best for us…

Everything went fine until towards the end of the paddle training, dear old Trevor got himself stuck on a rock and needed a rescue – attempted by the two coaches!!! The incident ended in a – luckily harmless – swim for Trevor. As a result, the next exercise was “pinning training” (called “The Big Broach” by Wayne who favours the American side of things). The idea was for our group to get themselves pinned on a huge rock, trying to hold as many boats stacked against each other as possible. Quite a challenge, that was! Enough excitement for the morning and the coaches decided it was time for lunch.

The afternoon session started with a throw-line “aerobics class”, where the group had to practice throwing skills, first on dry ground. It went from simply throwing closed bags at each other to trying to hit one of a bunch of moving ‘aliens’ (supposedly representing trees…). After this warm-up exercise it was down to the cold water, starting with rescuing pink balls to practise their aiming capabilities. It was also the only time the coaches made use of Sean whom the Club had provided as assistant. He was asked to fish the pink balls out of the Strainer. Then the trainees had to offer themselves as targets and everybody had to go for a swim, even Carl who is not particularly fond of being subject to the wet element outside his boat… After some encouraging words from his fellow paddlers he went for it and so well, he even decided to have a second go! Well done, Carl!

Rescuing with a throw-line is one way of doing it, but swimmers close enough to the bank could also grab a paddle reaching out to them - next exercise, and extremely funny to watch! Still underestimating the force of the water, the rescuers kept falling over one by one upon contact with their respective swimmers. Finally, aggressive swimming training: How to best bounce down rapids as your vulnerable little self and how to get yourself out of trouble if there is no throwline in sight... A few full submersion runs for all of them! Meanwhile, it was getting colder and colder and we certainly did not envy the group their swims in 4° water... If it hadn’t been for sweet Moe & Colin providing everybody with a nice hot cup of tea, I guess they wouldn’t have lasted that long.

Finally, the coaches decided the group deserved some time for a play on the river by themselves, but by then everybody was so cold and knackered that most of them just ran back to the Centre to get a hot shower instead.

Time for dinner! We agreed to drive back to Llangollen and meet in a pub for some grub to fortify ourselves for the indoor part of the training to which me and my sister were cordially invited. Back at the Youth Centre, we were talked trough things like repair and first aid kits, ropes and other equipment to take and practised knots to use in set-up rescue situations. Later, we enjoyed a video on White Water Safety on some mean high-volume river somewhere in the States which was widely dismissed as interesting to watch but not applicable in our cases and then everybody was well pleased to crawl into their sleeping bags. It had been a very long day, indeed!

The next morning started with another breakfast cooked by Sean, this time with the assistance of Graham, which he desperately needed since the group had increased from 8 to about 20 people. Bacon, eggs, beans and toast, it was all there. - a big thank you to the organiser for that! After this delicious meal it was time to “go back to work” again, i.e. to Bala.

As for me, I had to show my sister a bit of beautiful Wales, so we took our own route to try and find the site of Graham’s epic swim on the Conwy, leaving the gang to their wet task for most of the day. Back at the Tryweryn around 4 p.m., we were just in time to see at least one of only two “set up rescue plays”: Wayne sitting on a rock in the middle of the river, pretending he had broken his leg, wanted a rescue without too much shaking. The group managed well so there was not a lot of talk about this…

The final exercise, carrying swimmers down a rapid on your boat, ended in more of a disaster. Some of the paddlers were clearly not used to the extra weight and a couple got themselves into real trouble, loosing control and getting stuck on the Strainer at the end of the run, in need of a real rescue! Quite breathtaking to watch! (Talk about good exercise!)

Again, the weather had been miserable all day and everybody had enough of the cold water, so Wayne and Graeme decided to call it a day, skipping the debrief and other formalities. Only a few could muster enough energy to go down to the Centre by boat and even the hardiest did not last longer than half an hour before they showed up to queue for a hot shower.

Soon, it was time to go home with a long drive ahead of us. We agreed to meet half-way down the journey for a real “sportsmen” meal of greasy KFC chicken and chips at a service station and from there, it was straight home, overtaking a gritty old green and yellow van on the way (only owing to the strong headwinds … Ed.) . By now, I knew my way home…

by Fera de Vries, May 1999