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During 1997, in an effort to do something 'different', I decided to try to book up an 'action' weekend, and some White Water Rafting seemed to fit the bill. When surfing the Net for anything related to trips of this type, I noticed that of all the white water rafting references that the search engine found, including those in exotic locations around the world, one was in Scotland, from a unit known as Splash White Water Rafting. This, as it was closer to home, seemed practical. Contacting Splash, we arranged a three-man two-day tour for October, allegedly the best time of year to catch the rivers in spate. We booked a trip on the Orchy - the best river for rafting in the country - according to Splash. To quote them "This is not a river for the faint of heart - raft it if you dare!! The Orchy is a 'full-on' Alpine style river that has no respect for anyone daring to travel along its twisting path. This must be the UK's best rafting river". All this sounded very interesting.....
Two of the intrepid rafters - Daniel Ecott and Eric Hooper - are shown above.
None of us had never done anything like this before, so we did not know what to expect. As it happened, we were not disappointed. Just prior to the planned weekend though there had not been much rain. When we arrived in Glen Orchy on the Friday evening, and took a look at the river, it looked pretty low.
Because of the low water, our river outing on Saturday was on the River Awe. However, it was raining and things looked hopeful - and the forecast was for more rain overnight. Whilst quite tame, the River Awe trip was a useful precursor to the trip down the River Orchy, and it gave us a few pointers as to how to handle the raft and stay afloat! We learned 'body rafting' too. Basically this is white water rafting without the raft. Good fun - if a little cold. We all had a few goes at this though! By the time we finished our river Awe trip, we were very cold.
Overnight Saturday the forecast rain did indeed fall, and in the morning we awoke to a dull, wet and misty start - excellent weather! We arrived at the Bridge of Orchy meeting point on Sunday morning to join the other craft (4 in all) that were making the River Orchy trip. We set off and met the first roar of the Orchy rapids after about a mile down the river. Wow!, this river was much better! It was this that we had come for! Swollen by the rain, the water flowed fast and wild. The rapids had whacky names, and varied in size
from quite tame to major falls. In fact, one was so big that we had to disembark and walk round it for our own safety - it was judged too risky by the Splash guys. The rafts were sent down this rapid empty and collected down river for the trip to continue. It was necessary to jump into the river from a height of about 30 feet in order to get back into the rafts. In all, on the Orchy, we travelled about 8 miles and ran nine major grade 3+ or higher rapids. This was a great trip which was enjoyed enormously by everyone who took part.
Some pointers and hints:
Take a look at the White Water Rafting Photo Gallery - HERE
The action pictures are actually video captures using a Hauppauge WINTV card, so the quality is not great.
