NENE WHITEWATER CENTRE 31ST MARCH 2007
Having got a not so early night the night before, getting up at five to leave at six proved a bit of a struggle, but reminding myself that I was off to the nene white water centre that day woke me up and had me feeling a lot better about such an early start.
On the road by five past six the two hour drive up to Northampton went smoothly, only taking one wrong turn thanks to some questionable navigating from me. We arrived around eight to find the more eager members of our convoy already checking out the course, which, as we were early was only on one pump, and didn’t seem particularly threatening or exciting, but with some in depth run throughs and descriptions of the course I just about knew what to expect. As soon as the main building and changing rooms were open we were in and sorting our kit out, it was a chilly “two thermals” kind of day, so the changing rooms were a lot more inviting than the car park, and, though they were quite small, they were clean and dry and better than a lot of places that I’ve tried to get changed. I was happy as I paid on the way out, at just 6 quid a session for juniors, and 8 for adults, it was a bargain session.
After another quick walk round the course we got onto the water, at first I blasted through the whole course to get comfortable with it, and once you’re in, the whole course seems a lot bigger, and the channels seem a lot wider than they look from above, so you don’t get thrown into the sides of the channels as much as I would have expected. The whole course has been designed perfectly, a couple of fairly big waves at the top, a big ski jump/hole, then the first recalculating pool, then a nice river running section, which was really good for practicing breaking into eddies, then a few really nice little waves and stoppers down to the bottom.
Being fairly inexperienced on white water, I found the nene a really comfortable place to paddle, it could be as hard or as easy as you wanted it to be, and nothing was particularly scary in itself, though a few of the things I could have tried in them may have been. After getting used to the course I had a quick tutorial on breaking into and out of eddies thanks to Ben, which helped me paddle the course more confidently and overall I found the nene a really great place to be trying new things. As the session wore on I mostly found myself in the lower section of the course playing in the stoppers and waves, which were all perfectly sized, with nice pools after them, taking away that horrible feeling of being underwater, and not knowing what the rivers going to throw at you, and made them really good fun.
A short while later, playing in the last stopper, I went over, went to roll and just felt my paddle wedge straight into one of the pieces of concrete making up the course, I stayed there for a little while determined to get my paddle back, as I really didn’t want to swim, but eventually had to give up, and pull out of my boat; only to see my paddle floating a couple of metres from me, with only half a right blade left. My confidence and enthusiasm took quite a knock after I had broken my paddle, luckily Rob had come prepared, and had a spare paddle, but it took me a while to get back into it. For the last fifteen minutes of the session the pumped were opened up all the way to three pumps, which made the whole course a fair bit munchier, but great fun.
The end of the session came eventually, and we all piled into the changing rooms, which were steaming hot, and a welcome break from the chilly waters. Slinging the kit back into the cars and strapping the boats back on we were all absolutely knackered, luckily we drove back in convoy, so no one had to interrupt precious relaxing time with navigating.
The whole day turned out at less than 20 quid, and the session was quite long enough for me, and the course was just perfect for a Saturday mornings paddling, and a good time was had by one and all.
