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The Sketch
After a relaxing day the day before, we decided it would be a good day for something more active. Some canoeing, in fact.
Before we got around to doing that, we had a team breakfast. Kas didn’t go for a run because she was too tired. We sat around the outside table with some fresh breads and pastries from the only shop in the village. We were generally contemplating our state of being before heading off for the main event.
One of the reasons we’d come to this area was that the previous year, whilst watching the Tour de France, we’d seen some overhead shots of the race passing through the Ardèche Gorge. There’d been one shot of kayakers passing beneath the Pont d’Arc. We fancied having a go at that. I mean, why not…
Boat Hire
Kas had, on a previous run, noticed the cluster of kayak places just in the village of Vallon Pont d’Arc. We decided just to head over there and see what was what. We didn’t expect to be able to get going straight away. You normally have to book stuff in the busy summer season. But the first place we went to offered reasonable rates and could accommodate us straight away. Fair enough. We had to pick up our life jackets and “stuff buckets” before moving down to the customer parking area. That seemed a bit weird, but I digress.
The weather was warm, so we weren’t quite sure what to take with us. We guessed it would stay warm enough to not need jumpers or much else in the way of other clothes. We stuffed towels and drinks into the buckets and made our way around to the actual canoes. We’d bought a package involving 2 boats seating 2 people each. We’d notionally got 2 hours to progress our 8km down the river. That would allow us an hour and a half to chill in the river before getting their bus back home.
All of the places just here basically do packages where you paddle downstream only underneath the Pont d’Arc. Once we were in the water, we understood why. There are two main reasons. Firstly it’s really busy, and secondly, there are rapids that you’d never be able to paddle up.
To avoid repeating the mistake I made in the Lake District in June, I made sure the boats we got had backrests for the seats – in June I’d got one without a backrest (they didn’t offer me one) and because I’m a bit on the portly side and don’t do enough sit-ups, I found it virtually impossible to use the canoe because it’s like sitting upright on the floor with your feet in front of you. This requires stomach muscles, and mine aren’t very strong.
Paddling
Anyway, back at the plot, the included backrests in the price. Ami buddied up with me in one canoe and Kas shared the other with Izzy. This fixed a further problem that we encountered in Catalonia a couple of years back (see Kayaking). On that day we’d tried to even out the total muscle power in each boat by having Ami and Kas in one and me and Izzy in the other. The problem with that line up was that the weight difference. Mine and Izzy’s boat was sloping a bit. So much that Izzy could barely get her paddle down into the water.
So this time we went for the most even distribution of weight in each canoe. The two heaviest in one boat and the two lightest in the other. That should at least mean that the canoes were sitting flat in the water. As we are right now that means Ami and I were sharing.
I think we got the hang of the paddling quite quickly. I was at the back so to some extent I was able to counteract Ami’s unbalanced use of the paddle by just going the opposite way to her. Neither of us is great at the game and both of us are strongly right-handed. It took us a while to figure out how to go straight. It seemed to take Kas and Izzy a bit longer to figure it out though. Ami and I were also going faster most of the time.
The river level was really low, and in most places you could easily have jumped out and walked no more than knee-deep. There’s more water in the spring and late autumn, apparently. Anyway, there’s also quite a lot of rocks in the way, which make for rapids. Some of those were a bit narrow and shallow, others had a proper “log flume” moment.
Before we’d got into the boats they’d advised us of just two things about the rapids. Firstly, pick a straight line and go at it with confidence and speed. Secondly, if you fall out, it’s best to let the water float you down to a calmer bit and then pick up all your stuff, rather than trying to stand up in the fast-flowing water. That’s what they told us, anyway.
Dunking
We were all doing just fine and dandy until Ami and I had what I’ll generously describe as a loss of communication when entering one of the sets of rapids. We didn’t decide which gap we were going to paddle straight and fast through. As a result, we ended up side-on with a rock against the side of the canoe. The water was flowing around both sides of the rock, but where we ended up we were pretty much beached and couldn’t get off it again. We managed to tip our canoe over whilst trying to free it.
Hmmm! Riding the rapids out proved to be difficult because the water wasn’t actually deep enough to ride. My knees were immediately on the bottom, as were Ami’s, and for a brief moment, we were also underneath the boat.
We got out quickly enough but were pretty much stuck. The boat wouldn’t move, and we couldn’t get a solid enough footing to push it or turn it back over again. Thankfully we weren’t too proud to accept extra hands from a nice woman who was wading in the river just below us. She walked up and gave the canoe a good tug, which at least dislodged it enough that it moved down a bit into some actual water.
This allowed us to turn it over and collect all the paddles before getting back on top again. And off we went, over the next run of rapids and into a calmer bit, where we accelerated along to catch up with Kas and Izzy, who’d shot across that set of rapids without a hitch.
So Ami and I got totally soaked, and our stuff bucket leaked a bit, so two towels and one phone got a bit of a splashing, but otherwise we were none the worse. Funnily enough, we mastered the art of running the rapids after that and we managed to put in two or three real sterling efforts that probably looked really good from a distance.
The Pont d’Arc
Not too long after the dunking we reached the Pont d’Arc, and they’ve supplemented the natural slip-off slopes thereby adding some beach-worthy sand on one side. On the other side is a big pebbly beach which is pretty easy to get a canoe up to, so that’s where we went. We’d been going a while, so we deserved a break and a drink, probably. It allowed me to dry out my phone, and re-pack the stuff buckets. We put all the wet stuff in one, and all the dry stuff in the other.
After 15 minutes or so, during which the girls both decided to swim in the river under the arch, we jumped back onto the canoes to finish our stint. The river below the arch is much easier to paddle than above it, It’s mainly flat, smooth flowing. No rapids. So Ami and me shot off into the distance and periodically stopped for a breather while Kas and Izzy caught up.
We landed at our destination at about 1:50, having taken 2 hours and 20 minutes to make our way down the 8km of paddling. At the end there wasn’t really a beach for chilling at, and nor were there any useful facilities like toilets or a cafe. We just jumped on the first bus back, because were wet. Anyway, the girls wanted to finish the afternoon in the pool rather than the river.
A Bit of Geocaching
As we were in the period of the year where Groundspeak offers incentives to new cachers in the form of pictorial souvenirs, I was kind of obliged to go out and find a geocache to keep the required one-week run going. After doing most of the caches in the village the previous day I’d left one traditional on the river bridge just down from our village, and there was also an earthcache there.
The traditional was in place and the earthcache was both easy and interesting. It was all about the flooding of the river and the geological and climatic conditions that cause it. It was alongside a bridge over the river. One of the tasks was to go find the height markers on the bridge pillars that are used to measure floods. While we were there the river was maybe 1m deep and the bridge deck was a good 16m clear of the water.
In the late 1800’s they had the biggest ever recorded flood at the site. At that time there was a different bridge, and it was higher up than the current one. The water level came all the way up to the underside of the deck, so the river has risen from 1m depth to about 20m. And because the surrounding land is a flat flood plain, the river expanded from 30m to 900m. This means that the village we were staying in would have been flooded. Madder than a sack of monkeys. The photos here illustrate just how much of a flood it was.
Beer O’Clock
When I got back to the apartment it was most definitely beer o’clock. Kas and I retired to the bar and sank a couple of cold ones whilst wondering if it was time to drag the kids out of the pool yet. We called them out at one point for a cool drink and a few crisps.
We’d sort of decided to go to the nice-looking restaurant over the road, so we weren’t hurrying. When we arrived though, we discovered Monday was their night off. Having already had a beer or two that meant our options were now rather limited. We tried walking along the main road, where we’d noticed a couple of bars. Sadly they were all attached to one or other of the camping venues – not really “restaurants” as such.
We made it all the way over the river bridge before deciding that we were going to walk all the way into town, but also that we weren’t likely to find a nice restaurant any time soon. Monday seemed generally to be their day off.
So we walked all the way back again and camped at pretty much the first place we’d passed. They did pizzas. It turned out that they did quite good pizzas, and they also did beer. So that’s what we had. I had mine later than everyone else because they forgot to put it in the oven. We weren’t in a rush and it’s not like there was anywhere else we could go. Anyway, it was nearly 9 pm by the time we arrived there. It was a pleasant place to sit for an hour watching the world go by.