Well, Italy was obviouslythe place to be in May. Four separate blog posts from for separate Team-Pyranha paddlers in the last few months. I’ve heard plenty of people rave about the place in the past, and have been desperate to get out there for a while now.
Photo: Jim Pullen
Fortunately I managed to find couple of days spare leave from work at the end of May, persuaded two willing partners in crime and set about planning a 5 day mission. Initial plans for a fly-drive were scuppered as a result of an inconvenient Icelandic volcano, so we investigated the driving. 17 hours each way wasn’t going to be pretty, especially given the short duration of the trip, but it was possible, so we hit the man-up button and booked a ticket for the Eurotunnel.
Leaving straight from work on the Friday night we plugged the coordinates for the Ribo (actually in Switzerland) into the sat-nav and settled into the drive. 17 hours of travelling later and we rocked up at the put-in feeling ropey as hell, but fired up to paddle. The warm-up was a tasty 15m high slide – a definite wake-up call – before completing the river, then the remaining ~3 hour drive to Campertonogo in Italy.
The warm-up fall on the Ribo
The next few days were a blur of excellent whitewater, cheap pizza and even cheaper red wine, before we finally had to face the monster drive northwards to roll into work on Thursday morning, utterly destroyed.
Here’s a few more photos of the trip:
Photo: Jim Pullen
Photos by Rob Tuley and Tim Burne unless otherwise attributed