Tyne Tour - nov 3rd,4th, 5th

So...its November the 7th and last weekend we went to the Tyne Tour.  After everyone was ready we headed off up the M6 in 3 very very heavily loaded cars (cheers Tori, Andy and Tom M for the transport) we soon hit a load of traffic and crawled along at a snails pace.

  Once the gigantic tent was put up (tar Matt W) we dashed to tesco's in the dark after saying howdi to the MMU Manc lot.
The night was spent in a typical early teenage way, gettin drunk on the park next to our tent and watching impressive (but a wee bit scary) fire poi shows from other students.  One gadge messed around on a uni-cycle until Andy decided to have a go - much to our amusement.. :)
A daring guy showed off his fire breathing skills and another set his hair on fire but must have been very drunk because he didn't notice until someone rushed over slapping his head! ouch!
Several of our guys decided to see how many people could fit on the zip wire..and i believe we won against MMU Manc ha har! :-)  or did we???

ANYWAY...the PADDLING.....
After getting up quite late and sorting bags of gear, boats and cars we split into three groups, Tori and some friends went off to do the Tees (which i believe is a very hard and scary river ), Mark, Tom, Tom Simon and Mark's friend went to do the North Tyne which included the infamous Wardens Gorge, a grade 3 rapid that cannot be scouted out or portaged because of access-or lack of it :(  Any way the first we heard about their day was when we saw Tom's battle scarred helmet - complete with a huge scrape - good job he was wearing it ay!  Andy, Matt and I decided to do the South Tyne described as grade 2 rapids with stretches of flat water...however when we did this river there was a distinct lack of water and the rapids were very shallow and we spent most of the day hitting rocks, getting dislodged and stuck and spinning round on them!! funny at first ...but not by the end! All in all it was a 'quiet' chilled day.  (The other 2 groups may have accounts of there  days on here soon )

After missing out on tickets for the Ceilieh  a sort of Scottish folk line dancing (i think??) we decided to head into town for some munchies but to cut a long story short the food queues were huge and the pubs were packed.  Tori found a good pub and introduced us to some of her mates including Geordie who was the club chair a few years ago (awesome photo below).
After some drunken attempts to get into the Ceilieh we harrassed a security guard with some pieces of chicken ...but not before Simon got all hard and forceful with a naked guy ;)

The next day saw another late start and after I decided to go for the North Tyne I put my wetsuit on so I couldn't pursuade myself not to go - Though I did look a bit silly walking around Tesco in it.
Andy was being a lazy bugger and decided not to paddle on Sunday and instead went for a warm shower and a long overdue crap (so he told us).  Meanwhile the rest of us headed to the first rapid on the N.Tyne, the right side were easy rapids whilst the left had knarly rock strewn white water that had messed up Toms helmet the day before.
As the river went on with short rapids and long flat sections we came to a chute down a weir that a couple of us dissapeared under! (to our chests).  Tom B and Mark went down backwards to attempt a stern stall at the bottom.
We soon came to the top of the gorge (not with high cliffs though??!) and a split in the river line - right grade 3, middle grade 4, left grade 2...so me, Simon and Matt headed down the grade 2 to finish up at the bottom of a water fall, the others, Tori, Tom, Tom, Mark and Geordie all shot over the waterfall in impressive style...Now us three sat wondering at the bottom and Tori must have noticed this and asked if we wanted to have a go...so with a bit of umming and arring on my part i followed Simon and Matt to the top.  Matt went first and after 2 attempts of rolling came up all safe and sound (to a little cheer from the rest of us) next Simon shot over and dissapeared from my view for a few seconds.  I dummied the first attempt after being swept too far left and then before I chickened out shot over too to land still alive on a big brace :-)
The gorge section wasn't as bad as i thought it would be (especially after the fall) and me and Matt arrived at the bottom with big grins, the others played more and threw in some cool ends.  The last section was a flat water slog to the campsite where we met Andy and Maarit and took down the tent, packed cars etc etc and headed off home - again we hit a pile of traffic and it took ages - especially since Andy's car plumeted from 80 to 45mph and looked like it was going to die on us.

All in all i hope everyone had a good time - i know i did!  Cheers for everyone coming and hopefully next year will be even better!

If you see Mark don't forget to ask him about his testicle joke which we heard about 10 times on sat night :)
More photo's on there way - yay! 

STILL MORE PHOTOS TO FOLLOW

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