Marsh
tomthepaddleman | February 19, 2009With the huge amounts of water flowing down the thames thanks to all the snow and rain we’ve had for the past couple weeks, we were spoilt for choice on where to paddle. So after we had all met up at hurley, we checked what the weir was doing and it was pretty high and just in the stantions so decided to head off and see what marsh weir was doing.
Turned out it was a bit on the low side but still was forming quite a good wave/hole type feature where backstabs, flashbacks, blunts and felixes were all possible, and nice looking shoulders.
Although it was good fun once you got on the wave, actually catching the wave involved some tricky manouvering, as the only eddy service is provided by a fish ladder and a wall 1-2ft out of the water between this and the main gates where the wave is. To be able to catch the wave involves climbing over the wall in your boat (easier said than done, having a friend to push off helps!) then paddling as hard as you can along a green diagonal onto the shoulder. At best it took some effort to catch, but marsh is one of those places where you can sit in it all day just bouncing around when you finally get on.
Towards the end the river started dropping off quite quickly so the wave/hole started to form into a bouncy, green wave with a nice pile-although this was near impossible to actually get onto. So although we didn’t have the best levels, I think this has to go into my top 5 features in the UK. Now whereabouts will have the best levels this weekend???
Tom
(hoping for some more rain!!!)