Welcome to Uganda

I’ve hit the ground running here in my first few weeks in Uganda. I had had a hectic week preparing before leaving the UK and on my arrival I managed a couple of relaxing days at the Hairy Lemon before starting work. I’ve been helping out with Love it Live it; being trained up by Sam Ward and Will Clark as a river guide here on the White Nile. We’ve just finished a two week advanced white water trip; they’ve been a great bunch to paddle with and it’s been cool to be able to boat lots of different stuff in what is just the very beginning of my stay here. As well as plenty of sessions on the Club and Nile Special waves, we spent time running the Silverback section up at the top of the river, paddling down the day one stretch with the rafts and boating to the Hairy Lemon along the day two rapids. Also we headed over up to two of the lesser known back channels; Blade Runner and Escape Hatch. I hadn’t run these before and am glad I’ve had the opportunity (and will hopefully get in a few more) as the Bujagali Dam project is progressing fast and will soon have an impact on the whole top section.

I’ve also landed myself another job here; working behind the bar at the Hairy Lemon It’s a sweet set up, sessioning club wave in the morning, nile special in the afternoon then working in the evening. I’ve still got a bit of a bad shoulder going on (from Prague about six weeks ago) but it’s getting better and I’ve been able to enjoy getting back into big wave paddling and work on new things. Living on the island paradise is an awesome environment to learn in. Also there’s usually a good bunch of people to paddle with too. Already I've seen a ton of British paddlers come and go. I'm in Kampala today enjoying the delights of fast internet. So fingers crossed there should be some pictures at the bottom of this post:

One adventure over and another beginning

One month road tripping in Europe is over, a week in the UK is just finishing and five months in Uganda now lay ahead.

The World Cup of Freestyle Kayaking 2008 was everything I expected and more; all three competition were well organised, exciting to watch and a great to be a part of. Compared to the first ever series held two years ago in North America, these competitions have really grown and become truely world class competition. The turn out for all three event was huge and the standard of paddling was high. Like I said before I left; I really didn't know what to expect when it came to my position in it all. I'm happy with the ranking of 15th overall (all results can be found at www.kayaksession.com). I learnt a lot at each event and I've got lots of things to work on now.

This weekend was meant to be the grand Festival of Freestyle; unfortunately British summer never really happened this year and there's been a whole ton of rain. The past week saw the river levels rising in Nottingham and the competition had to be scaled back. The always dependable and awesome Jim from AlpKit pulled it out of the bag and manage to hold the 4th round of the AlpKit series. James 'Pringle' Bebbington topped the men's class and Claire O'Hara won the women's (I made it into the final in 3rd place but unfortunately ended up finishing in 5th). The river was going up constantly all day yesterday during the competition; this is the judges' stand that did over look the original competition feature:


Aside from that and recovering from my European adventure, it's been a fairly intense week. I've been getting sorted for heading out to Uganda where I'll be for the next five months. I had awesome time there last Christmas and am so excited to spending the whole winter there this year. I can't believe it's finally tomorrow that I'm leaving, speaking of which, I'd really better get back to packing...

World Cup - Thun (photos)