Every man and his dog…

We have been very fortunate of late in being treated to some fantastic water levels on the River Thames and this weekend was no exception. Plans for a weir league event were organised by Scout last week and it started with a 10am meet in the Hurley car park. Whilst getting changed, the theme for the event was decided – “backwards”. This could be interpreted in many ways, but I don’t think anyone expected Pikey’s interpretation! Most of us were going for back-stabs, back-loops etc but then Pikey stepped up. Well, I say stepped up. I actually mean that whilst queueing up (and boy was the queue big – it seemed like everyone in the Thames Valley, plus surrounding area, was in the eddy) we noticed Pikey was up to something but it wasn’t initially clear what.

As he launches back into the water his plan becomes very clear. He had taken the theme of “backwards” to the extreme and was going to tackle the wave whilst kneeling backwards in his boat! We were impressed when he managed to surf the first gate like this. We were even more impressed when he moved across and surfed the second gate like this, but he had one more trick up his sleeve – he even managed a few blunts!! He very quickly discovered, however, that this position in the boat was not conducive to rolling and, as he flushed off the wave upside down, had little option but to pop his deck and swim for the bank. This effort effectively ended the weir league event with Pikey declared, unanimously as the victor.

We carried on the session for a while longer, until we all got bored of the MASSIVE queue and decided that enough was enough – time to move on!

I was back down at Hurley on Sunday afternoon with Martyn and Tim. The level was absolutely fantastic – nice hole gates with a brilliant steep, green middle wave. To make the session even better, we were the only ones in the eddy queue for most of the session.

More photos are available at http://photos.andywicks.com/Hurley1stMarch2009