Once a regular Braintree club trip in the 80’s - so we’re told from Dave Puttick and Kevin Dudley who are keen to pull out images of long fibreglass kayaks matched with badly colour co-ordinated kayaking gear (think purple and teal) shooting some of the weirs that make up the 7 mile River Ivel paddle.

Fast forward to the year 2022! And here we are again with thirteen eager Braintree club paddlers set to paddle the 7 miles of the River Ivel from Biggleswade to Tempsford. The agreement was to meet at Mill Lane car park at 9am, although, Kev’s sat nav had other idea’s taking us first to a location 6 minutes away . Once we realised the error (wasn’t hard to work out, as we were the only ones at our location) we met up with the rest of the group to sort out a shuttle to Tempsford.

At 10.30 and a brief check to make sure everybody was there and ready, we were off! The weather was forecast to rain most of the day, however, luck was on our side as the rain stayed away throughout the day.

The Ivel started with a steady gradual flow winding its way through the Bedfordshire countryside before reaching a split in direction… we opted to go right which is towards the first weir on our route - a sloping weir that goes under a bridge and ends up in a large mill pool at the bottom. The route to the first weir was slowed down by a huge tree that was covering the entire width of the river, but James Wood burrowed through some tiny gap and found a path for the rest of to follow.

We all shot the weir successfully and Ian Fisher was quick to start playing in the stopper/wave – which I think he needed to stop him falling asleep as he’s usually only found on white water.

After passing the first weir we stopped for lunch - this was pretty much the half way point. Getting back on the river we still had a few weirs to go, the next one we came to, was a vertical 7ft drop – so a great place to practice those boof strokes. (see images)

Shortly after, we were at the next weir, a small concrete closed-in weir with a slightly grabby stopper, again everyone successfully made their way downstream towards the last 2 weirs – which isbasically a small weir 10 meters upstream from the last weir and ends in a large mill pool - probably the best playspot of the entire river – where there’s the opportunity to practice some surfing and ferry glides.

As time was ticking on, we paddled round the corner to try to find the get-out, which we were slightly unsure about, but the paddler-friendly farmer directed us where we needed to get out and shown us all the path through the farm and back to our cars. As planned, we were off the water just before 3pm, so we could all get back home at a reasonable time.

Thanks to everyone that came and made a day of it!