Thunder of the rapids

Another Rough Guides commission; this time a top day with Ryan and Adam, white-water rafting at the Lee Valley centre in Essex (canoeing centre for the 2012 London Olympics). Beautiful sunny day but bloody cold water. Katie, Colin & Irene joined us in the raft, first undergoing lengthy briefs that could be summed up as "hang on like feck but not to that rope handle!" Then had to practice falling in and being hauled back -- dignity at all times.

Four or five gos at the slalom course, one just with the flow and the rest doing stupid stuff like trying to surf the torrent. You do that by driving the bow upstream into the flow and, so the theory goes, balancing on top of it. It took me a while to understand the plan -- my surfing experience to date has invariably involved pointing downhill.

Meanwhile I was at the front and spent much of these manoeuvres underwater, with guide Max's instructions totally unintelligible as a result. They made only marginally better sense, once I got the water out of my ears. With the boys' derision ringing in those same ears, Max had made me put on a yellow helmet, like the non-swimmers and otherwise Special Needs wimps. Not good.

We lost Colin overboard and, at one point, three or four bods from other rafts were flailing around in the thrashing spume, their paddles somehow leading the wreckage downstream. That was quite exciting. And at the bottom of the course each time, we steered onto a travelator and glided up to the top again. Toot toot. Felt quite steely-eyed as we passed close by spectators, leaning over the fence at the Terrace Cafe. "You Weren't There!"

Plenty more pics at http://tinyurl.com/5to3783 The video clip of us surfing is rather short.