River Leam – Trip Report
Dave Clarke posted a flat water trip running from Warwick to cover some of the Leam and some of the Avon, early in January. Seasonal flu and a cold snap saw the interest in this trip decline pretty quickly. My car had packed up and although I had just bought a new car, I had not yet arranged roof bars, with this excuse in hand and the last vestiges of flu coursing around my system, I thought I would have a dry day in. Before I had a chance to back out, Fraser messaged me to suggest that we paddle in tandem in his canoe. I’m really glad that he did. What a great day out!
The agreed meetup was at the car park for St Nicholas Park in Warwick. Its worth noting that height-restriction barriers (2m) have been put up at this car park now. While you can get under this with a car and a kayak, vans and cars with uprights may struggle in future. Once all five paddlers had arrived, we agreed to change the get-on and alter the trip to accommodate. As a result, we ended up doing a bit of exploration and finally settled on parking near the field off Princes Drive, just at the Princes Drive Weir.
This pretty much determined that we would do a short trip up the River Leam. We get on just above the weir and decided that we would save shooting that for the end of the trip and paddled upstream. This trip is pretty urban, so you paddle through Leamington Spa, past the Leamington Canoe Club (many comments made about their abundant facilities) and up to the next weir that lies under the Parade. A chute runs down the side of the weir, but there is a metal spike sticking up in the middle of the chute, so you need to get out and get your boat over that and drag it up the chute. With a small group, this was all achieved pretty quickly.
Above the weir, the river runs past the Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum and along Jephson Gardens. On the other bank is Leamington Boat Center. Dave decided to take us in for a quick visit to introduce Katarina and to show her the shop etc. Of course, on a snowy wintery Sunday, the shop was closed but it was pleasant to visit familiar territory.
We continued to paddle upstream, and after a while had the good fortune to bump into John and Penny Spooner. John was paddling his lovely Silverbirch OC1 and, after dropping several hints, I managed to convince him to let me have a paddle. This was a great experience. I learned a lot in the 10 minutes or so of play that I had in this boat. One was that these boats are like the play-boats of the open boating world and can turn on a dime. While they feel very tippy, they have great secondary stability and you can get some great edge pretty easily (although in the snowy conditions, I was rather more reserved in my attempts than I would have liked). In fact, you pretty much have to paddle these on edge the entire time, or you overpower them too easily and you end up turning the boat. I can really imagine working a bit harder at this style of canoeing, to possibly eventually prefer this to being in a kayak. Comfort in these boats is probably something you have to get used to, much like any other open boat. I also discovered that such a responsive boat highlights so many flaws in your paddle technique, and there is not much space for lazy paddling, so I expect that more paddling in one of these can only improve your paddling. Perhaps my greatest moment in the OC1 was photo-bombing Rob’s selfie, which made for a lovely pic. He might even include it in this trip report [hint] 🙂
The other thing that I learned was that Fraser and I need to work on our tandem skills. Fraser kept telling me what a difference paddling in tandem with John had been. John is an exceptional paddler and I have no doubt that in 10 minutes he had passed on more pearls of wisdom than we could have imagined. All of that said, I think Fraser and I do pretty well. To begin with, we rarely fall out over things on the water and we’re good at banter and our communication is pretty reasonable. A short chat once I got back into the boat had us timing our strokes better together, including pauses for stern corrective steering manuoevres and better calls on the more drastic bow steering strokes. Thanks for the coaching, John!
Before we turned around to head back, Katarina opened a packet of gummy snakes and shared them around. In the cold, this little bit of fuel was welcome.
The trip back was a little bit more exciting. There was enough water running over the Parade Weir for Dave and Rob to shoot this weir in their kayaks. The drop is pretty steep and is reasonably high. Most significantly, Rob’s touring boat has a V-shaped hull so we were all super-impressed that he stayed dry! After a bit more paddling, we got back to Princes Drive Weir and there was little hesitation before Dave, Rob and Katarina had all shot down the weir. Fraser and I lined up for the weir and paddled over. Tandem drops are interesting and I learned something within a few seconds… the bow paddler definitely needs to move back before the drop. We hit the bottom and the water reached my chest coming over the front of the boat. Fortunately, despite Fraser’s recent success at some weight-loss, the stern of the boat was still heavy enough to pull us clear. We stayed upright, but the boat was pretty flooded, although not quite swamped. Stability in a full boat is challenging, particularly when in tandem. It makes sense for both paddlers to carry bailing scoops for situations like this! We managed to paddle to the weir steps and exit the boat to empty it.
While the option to paddle down to the Avon and back was still open, we had paddled a neat 5 miles in snow and rain and were all happy enough to get off the water and get some warm food into us. We headed back up to the cars and loaded up to head home. It was quite pleasant to be home just after lunch time, with some time to relax and get warm again.
Thanks for a lovely trip and a good reminder that even when the weather is miserable and you’re feeling a bit flu-ey, getting out onto the water can help change your perspective.
– Ro Puttergill