My Cool Hobby

I take great pleasure in the looks of incredulity I get when I start talking about what I got up to at the weekend. It makes me feel like I have a cool hobby. I do have a cool hobby! Photography is fun, but kayaking is fun in a completely different way. When I go kayaking I get to:

• Enjoy the Scottish outdoors
• With a few mates
• Challenge myself
• AND have a workout all at the same time, without getting a chance to realise that I'm exercising because I'm so focussed on navigating the river. Have you ever been to the gym and kept a beaming grin on your face the whole time?

For these reasons I can never quite understand why so few people kayak, but I suppose the occasional bit of mortal peril can have that effect. It's worth noting that photography and kayaking can be combined, but only with extreme caution not to end up with a soggy camera!

This isn't me in front of the camera, but I am very proud of this photo.

To provide a bit of background for those of you who don't know very much about whitewater kayaking, rivers are given a grade between 1 and 6. Grade 1 means that a complete beginner isn't likely to have any problems on the water. Grade 6 is a near death experience... and that's if you're lucky! I'm comfortable up to about grade 3, and if I get enough chance to plan my line through a grade 4 rapid from the bank I'll sometimes give it a go. If I don't psych myself out first.

On Sunday four of us went down to the River Nith in the Southern Uplands, which is where I took the photo on the left. The section of the Nith we were planning on paddling is a grade 3, with the odd rapid which might be a 4 if there's enough water around.

On Sunday morning at about 11 o' clock, we were looking at the river gauge painted on a road bridge. When we paddled it a month ago I think the gauge was at about 1.5 - low. Anything above 3 on this gauge is classed as 'high'. The gauge goes up to 12, at which point I'm fairly sure the river would be in severe danger of taking the bridge with it. There had been rain in the 24 hours before we got there. A lot of rain. The gauge was reading about 5 and a quarter. 10 minutes later the gauge was nearly at 6 and it was still raining. Needless to say, we were having second thoughts.

Anyway, all was not lost. We bumped into about 5 other paddlers, one of whom is very familiar with the Nith. I'm glad we ended up with the size of group we did. We ended up not running the more dangerous gorge section, and had a great time on some really bouncy rapids. It was solid grade 3 paddling from start to finish (very, very different to flatwater interspersed with grade 3 rapids). One of our group had a 'swim', but we quickly reunited her with her boat at the side of the river and continued on our way. I myself had a couple of 'rolls', but the less said about the amount of time I spent upside down the better! I know that if I end up upside down I've done something wrong, but at least I knew what went wrong both times.

So that's what I got up to last weekend. Actually this is what I got up to the last 3 weekends out of 4, and probably next weekend too.


Note: the photos above and many more can be found on my flickr photostream.

Some Observations on Paris

I got back home from a long weekend in Paris early this morning. There were 10 of us, all from Livingston Round Table, all in kilts. A fantastic weekend was had by all. This post isn't going to be about what happened in the weekend; it was unanimously agreed that "what goes on tour... stays on tour". I do however have a couple of observations to make while my 10cd Tangerine Dream compilation rips to iTunes.

Being a member of a group of 10 wearing kilts is good fun. Being a member of hundreds, if not thousands also in kilts who have ventured abroad to support their team is simply something else. The kilts don't only clearly mark us as Scots*, they seem to make us really approachable. Not only did we speak to many people who we normally wouldn't have, but I lost count of the number of people who wanted to take or have their photo taken standing next to us. (Although even if we'd charged a Euro per photo it wouldn't have made a dent in a round of beers.)

Communication was far from what I expected it to be. I thought our abilities at speaking French would be far inferior to our hosts' abilities at speaking English. What I found was that whilst there were several people who could speak better English than I can, the majority could speak near enough about as much English as we could French. I'm curious to know if my observation is indicative of:

•  The kind of people we were chatting to;
•  Parisians;
•  The French as a nation;
• ... anything!

Anyway communication wasn't a problem, just for a different reason than I'd expected. I'm not exactly sure how I got nominated as designated French speaker for the latter part of the weekend though! My French is "pas mal", but as a nation I think we should be pretty embarrased by our linguistic abilities.

In short: the Parisians are a very hospitable bunch, and I'll definitely visit again. I do however hope the price of a pint is much lower the next time I visit...

*I was born in England, but both parents are Scottish. I don't know if I'm Scottish or English, and various people have offered their own interpretations of my nationality. I'm definitely British, and I'll happily support Scotland... unless they're playing England.