I had heard of that there is a river in the Ardennes where one can do Kayak. Several weeks ago Aurelie mentioned it to me as one of the things she’s always wanted to do but never got to it. Luck stroke and the following week there was an offer for Kayak Libert on Groupon. We bought, of course.
Today was the big day, carefully selected avoiding weekends to limit the crowd. Wolfram and I drove to Aurelie and Romain’s place, loaded the car with their half of the picnic and hit the road direction Anseremme and the river Lesse.
We parked the car at the arrival of the journey and took a bus to Houyet, the starting point of the 22-kilometer kayak ride on the Lesse. The “launch” is a bit scary as they literally launch you in your kayak in the river. Except, unlike in Disneyland, if you miss your landing, you end up for sure in the water. With lots of screaming both kayaks made it on the water, with their load still inside and dry. Now the fun starts.
Unlike Romain who masterizes kayaking, the rest of us had to figure out how to paddle straight and move forward. The first 2-3km were huge fun because Wolfram and I never managed to go straight. Over the course of the day we improved but the facts are simple: we’re amazing at slaloming, why bother going straight?
At a descent pace, we paddled down the river. Surprisingly the level of water was pretty low and they were placing with barely 30cm of water. This lead to the bottom of the kayak touching the rocks in the river. Doesn’t help your self-confidence when you touch the rocks where others don’t or even worse get stuck on one. Once stuck, it's up to you to use your paddle to push on the rocks, your weight to move the kayak or step down and push the kayak. There is a strategy for everybody.
After a couple of hours paddling we reached the half way point and stopped for a picnic. We had bread, ham, tomatoes, cheese, cake and wine. Nothing to complain, this was a very good picnic. Only scary part was the 3 millions of kayaks passing in front of us. While the first half of the journey was very peaceful and we barely met anyone, the second half looked more like a highway jammed during rush hours.
We tried to sneak in between waves but unfortunately there was no way to avoid the crowd. That was truly the big negative point of the day as paddling in between other kayaks is not fun at all. Even scarier, apparently this was not a busy day. I can’t imagine what it looks like with more people.
We still had good fun going down the 2 small slides further down the river. We managed to avoid flipping the kayak around. The kayak reached nearly 90 degree vs. the water but still we didn’t flip. We were soaked but still in the kayak! From what Aurelie told us, they would have bet we would flip. I guess it must have looked as bad as it felt.
Painfully we finished the 22km in roughly 4 hours, faster than the crowd. The last 3km were really tough as we were tired and the wind was blowing in our face. With sore muscles (thanks Wolfram for paddling the most and the strongest) and blisters on the hands (that’s me) we made it. It was exhausting but definitely worth the effort… especially the first half as there is nothing to compare slowly going down the river under the sun.
