Wash Day

Description

Ray Goodwin and Paul Kirtley lead a group of canoeists down the River Spey on a day that quickly became known as "wash day".

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For more info on the River Spey Canoe Trip with Frontier Bushcraft, check out the following link:

http://frontierbushcraft.com/river-spey-canoe-expedition/

Tags: River Spey,canoeing,camping,bushcraft,washing machine,Knockando,paddling,Frontier Bushcraft,Paul Kirtley,Ray Goodwin,expedition,expeditioning,adventure,Scotland,Speyside,Spey,canoe

Video Transcription

I'm on our first Speight rip of 2015 with ray Goodwin and it's the first sunny day we've had and we've had a couple of days of rain which has been good because it's brought the river levels up and today has been a lot of fun and it's already become known as wash day and here's why can gone 19 approaching from the ski side to go over the top you would drop into my farm which is where they reckon the last glacier and Britney was maybe I mean 7 to 8 years ago when it really rains monstrously this will more than double the volume of the river but it's a fast rise River and a fast drop river because it's fed by very steep mountainsides which are very rocky as opposed to coming down through from Loch inch where it's fed an awful lot by marshland as well as mountains the mountains will cause a flash rise but the bulb holds water and lets out more steadily so I'm expecting next to nothing down the on I don't think the arm will be even be palpable in big water it can be a huge meeting but if you stay on river left you don't get into the crease where the two rivers fold together and that can be an alarmingly unstable area of water so anyway pass their Han tang and then see the river suddenly narrows they're black spiked or better known as the washing machine the washing machine is a nursery rhyme rapid is hey diddle-diddle

straight down the nipple and I should come over the edge it seems a long way down and then it's and what happens then is the whole river converges into a very tight in the pack set of waves the day started off really nicely with some gently moving water and the Sun on our faces so that we could get warmed up in every sense of the word before long we came to the rundown past the confluence of the on and the Spay we'd expected there to be not much water coming in from River right from the on and as we run down here we saw this to be true so this was a nice relatively gentle run down to help us get warmed up prefer therefore the washing machine once passed the yarn we then just had to run down relatively easy water to the Eddy above the washing machine where we needed to collect everybody to rebreathe them on what we wanted them to do and also be in a position to get everybody down there one by one you can

yes you want like Sonia ray and I headed down to and through the washing machine first so that we could signal to the group who were waiting in the idea above and also be in position to help anybody that might swim while coming down the rapids the last minute conversation we had there was just that Ray suggested going in front so I could film him going down the rapids with my GoPro which you can see here

okay

I'm gonna enjoy that screens is gonna wet himself

Kate going

these guys were very lucky to be still in their boat unfortunately the next pair Ian and Michelle were not quite so lucky

I had to put my camera down at this point and go after them they managed to swim to the bank quite quickly I retrieved their boat and all was well apart from them being a little bit soggy then we had a run down to and through no-can-do which one of the steepest sections of the river where line of sight is a little bit of an issue in places but it was a good run down may seem strange that I'm almost sitting in the bush here but this little eddy on the outside of the bend allowed me to maintain line-of-sight with a group at the top of the rapids as well as Ray who was sitting in the eddy at the bottom and you can see him coming into frame here

the washing machine and knockin do done in the morning the big stuff was out of the way so the afternoon should have been pretty much plain sailing by comparison they were going to be a couple of little upset yet not least of which was a cheeky little wave at the end of a diagonal run on one of the rapids

yeah how's it going there Rob do you enjoy that one Jeremy Schmitz how goes it close to one massive rock house wash day in just your man bit