Lowri Davies

Evening all.

For the past month or so I have been off swanning about the continent going paddling, rafting, competing and coaching. It’s a hard life… To make sure I don’t bore you all with too much whittering at once, I am going to split my blogging into bite-size posts of roughly a week each.

We start our exciting adventures in Val Sesia, North-West Italy. Well, actually the adventure really began by chugging across 7 countries, with a few closed mountain passes and long motorway queues to tackle along the way – but after a mere 45 hours on the road(!), we arrived at Campertogno.

We joined a plethora of British paddlers to enjoy some good water levels in the baking hot sunshine, with tasty ice cream and good wine to make it a true Italian experience.

A week of top notch paddling on classics such as the Egua, Lower Semenza, Mastalone, Sorba, Gronda and the many sections of the Sesia passed. We were too busy paddling to take any photos – in fact the only evidence we have of our paddling that week are a couple of grainy photos of the bottom drop of the Gronda!

Committed to proving to everyone that we really did do some boating, Fran selflessly threw herself at a rock to produce a stonkin’ bruise as further evidence!

The week seemed to come to an end all too soon and as we saddled up for the next part of our adventures we were quite sad to be leaving; but as soon as we were trundling through the spectacular valleys of the Dolomites, any melancholy was replaced with tingling excitement and anticipation for the week ahead…