Arrrrrhhhhhhh

Tuesday saw Charlie and Roo scheming an epic day, which considering that their rest day was to consist of running 3 of the Swiss gorges consecutively, was a worrying concept. As usual Tea - wallah Jim was banging on the tent door at 7am, to be followed shortly by Charlie’s enthusiasm. Charlie’s morning habit was as follows. 8am - Sleep like a log 8.02am - Awake and exit the tent within minutes of each other 8.03am – Sit in the car shouting "come on lets go paddling. . now. . . now". Charlie’s enthusiasm is commendable if somewhat misguided for 8am. With what seemed like a compromise we headed for the Oetz valley at about 10am. Binning the old and may I say obviously stale "warm up" idea - Roo, Charlie, Adrian, Jim and Martin launched into the Venter Ache. Within 11 yards Roo was practising his rolling techniques, within 100 yards Martin was practising his breast stroke, and it was 1-0 to the Venter Ache. The other four continued down. We went on down to the take out, we sat enjoying a coffee when Charlie arrived to ask us to go and pick up Jim who had had a close encounter with a tree, taken the subacqua root and only invited half his paddle! 2-0 to the Ventre Ache. Luckily the boys pulled it back at the last to finish 2-3 up on the river. And now for something a bit more exciting . . . . The Upper Oetz. I volunteered the ferry whilst Rob joined the Venter Ache Team for a quick jaunt. I dropped them off and drove to the get out, picked up my book and settled down for a good read. 27 seconds later the boys arrived! I guess it was flowing fairly rapidly!! Now for the final stretch of the day the Lower Oetz and this is where my flippancy ends. The Lower section was my section, but I’d made one fatal mistake. . . I’d read the guidebook and here are some choice quotes from the summary of the Lower Oetz:

I had only just finished sniggering at their collective idiocy, when the fuck up fairy made quick trip over to me, and within minutes I was swimming down a rapid of the smaller variety, (although the jury, I would like to say, is still out on whether it was a grade 2+ or it crept into the 3- category) Either way the Noce claimed a variety of bruised egos that day, but all concerned expressed a preference to bruised egos than bruised bodies! Team Knarly went on to paddle the Noce Gorge and we went to meet them at the get out. The VW had absolutely no problems finding a set of paddlers sitting aimlessly by the side of the road. The beama boys however had decided to freewheel down into a 300 foot gorge with the car and then looked surprised to find they couldn’t extract themselves. Obviously the only thing to do would be to rev the car to buggery until the clutch burnt out and they were stranded. An excellent idea, which they proceeded to execute with military precision. Adrian pulled them out, but the car was now property of Mr. Fucked and it limped into the nearest village, and awaited the AA. The 6 of us abandoned them, leaving a very weary looking Battersea physically, mentally and propritorially shattered. You can always judge a good kayak holiday by the amount of human debris at the end. A fantastic trip.

We started the long drive back to Calais, which we intended to break with a stop at Ausburg. We drove into the night and it was 2am before Andy found a crap filled lay-by next to one of the noisiest motorways in Europe for us to sleep in. A perfect spot with which to conclude our memories of idyllic Austria, thanks Andy. We circled Ausburg several times, having a careful look at most of the major and some of the minor residential areas, before finally randomly finding the slalom course. It was smaller than I had expected, and contained some knarly nightclub bouncer type of eddies. But all had a chance to show off, play in the stoppers, and ponder on the gender of several German paddlers.
 
We packed up the kit for the last time and headed north with a sense of sorrow. I knew I would feel quite lost trying to journey anywhere without the comforting view of the back of a red Toyota.