Last weekends mini adventure was a trip down the River Wye in canoes! We booked a half day trip from Kerne Bridge to Symonds Yat with the River Wye Canoe company and it didn’t disappoint. We hired two canoes – a three man, for myself, my eldest boy (whom at 4 years old is the youngest age they will take) and one of my sisters.
And a two man for my Mum and other sister. The meeting point was at Symonds Yat West (bring change for the car park machines!) at 1pm. We were greeted by members of the River Wye Canoe team, signed the usual insurance waivers, got kitted out and given a briefing of what to expect. Due to the lack of rainfall the river was running really low, meaning not much of a current, so a trip that usually takes around 1 hour 30 minutes was expected to take us more like 3 hours!!
We jumped into the minibuses and were driven the 10 minutes up the road to Kerne Bridge where, after a bit of chaos (there a lot of companies offering the same trip and everyone was trying to get their canoes in the water at the same time) we were off!
The River Wye is beautiful to paddle down, and the trip takes you through open fields and gorges with plenty of wildlife – we saw swans, ducks, geese and peregrine falcons! There are a couple of bits of ‘white water’ to navigate which was pretty exciting and I’m amazed we only ended up in the river bank the once! We also managed to beach ourselves in a particularly shallow section – thankfully there were plenty of people about to help drag us out, without us getting our feet wet!
It was a lovely afternoon, the river is really pretty and tranquil – it was definitely more challenging than we were expecting and none of us would have wanted to go much further than the 7 miles! The River Wye Canoe company were a well an organised operation and I would definitely recommend them – once our shoulders have recovered from the paddling I would come back and do it again.
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