Announcing River Maine - Flat water / Canoe paddle on 6 Febr

Malcolm Vincent

River Maine - Flat water / Canoe paddle on 6 February 2010 10:30

Fancy something gentle to start the year with? What about a flat water / canoe paddle down the River Maine from Ballymena to Randallstown. There will be a bit of exploring involved as there isnt much documentation of people doing this stretch, but Martyn and I checked it out last week and it looks lovely. Get in NW236573 (B18, Whitesides Road) out NW225462 (Randallstown Forest) c. 10km. Meet in Randallstown just over the bridge, at the viaduct.

See this event in the Event Calendar

_________________
Malcolm Vincent (BKC)

gary · Joined: 28 Jun 2007 Posts: 23 Location: carryduff

Is this canoe paddle or kayak or both

gary

Malcolm Vincent · Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 3:00 pm Post subject:

Martyn and Jordan are canoeing it ... Karen and I will be kayaking Smile

_________________
Malcolm Vincent (BKC)

Budweiser76 · Joined: 19 Aug 2007 Posts: 50 Location: Newtownards

How did the trip go?
_________________
Shamara Press

Malcolm Vincent · Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 6:16 pm Post subject:

It was really good ... and quite an adventure the first time!!

I am already looking forward to doing it again now that we know where we are going.

We didn't do the section we thought we were going to do .. Martyn changed the plans a little, and we ran the upper section instead of the lower one .. basically because there was quite a lot of water about I think.

It was a Grade I // II (V) paddle with a very gentle start. It got better (i.e. more interesting) as it went on.

There were two "eventful" weirs. The first is at a hydro-electric generating plant, and has a 12 foot vertical drop with a fairly renentive stopper at the bottom. The river then ran down a couple of hundred feet to a pretty nasty second double drop hidden by a false horizon, and at the water level on the day, it was definite danger of death. We had decided to get out and investigate this thououghly before making any decision, and were glad we did. There is a clear (easy!) walk around the whole thing river right.

We had quite an adventure trying to go river left -- remind me to tell you about that sometime lol. We have since heard that it's perfectly runnable in lower water levels.

The second was at Galgorm Hotel. We had been warned about this one, and decided to walk around it without looking at it. When we got there, as we were walking round it, it looked perfectly runnable and we would like to go back again and not get out this time.

The other drops were you basic bumpy slides, and there were a couple of nice rough sections.

All in all it compared very favourably to doing a run down the Lagan, with cleaner water, easier drops (walking round the hard one) and more than just flat water to paddle.

It wouldn't be quite as rough as the Annacloy.

I would recommend a club trip to run it again ... but maybe not get in quite so far up this time to cut out some of the really flat water at the top.
_________________
Malcolm Vincent (BKC)