Page 22 - Ceufad Autumn 2022

Our traditional, Friday night, T Fest quiz kicked
off the weekend’s antics. This allowed paddlers
to warm-up their competitive spirits in the bar.
A fantastic local band (The Misfits) then ensured
that friendly rivalries were pushed aside to make
room for dancing and partying until late.
The Saturday keen beans were seen warming
up their river legs well before the 9am sign-up
for the first paddling event of the festival. The
NRS Extreme Race begins with a mass-start, not
for the faint-hearted, sprint down through Miss
Davies’ Bridge, over Café Wave and through the
ANNETTE POWER Fingers section of the river. No chance to pick a
line: sharpen your elbows and try to stay upright!
A super strong field this year meant that all who
entered made it through to the finals, with the
dubious reward of hurtling head-to-head down
the Ramp of Dread and charging down through
NRA Bridge and Chapel Falls. A pure adrenaline
rush – and that was just the spectators!
Next up was the Pyranha Retro Rodeo Wave
competition. In true wave-barging tradition, with
an added element of making your kayak dance to
the beat of the riverside music, our daring Kings
and Queens strived valiantly to outdo each other.
There were a few spills, heaps of fun, carnage and
lots of spectacular moves. The crowd oohed and
aahed and were thoroughly enthralled.
The penultimate event for the Saturday,
was the newly invented Palm Epic Enduro. A
downriver endurance race consisting of laps of the
Graveyard section with the added, some might say
masochistic, element of returning to the top each
time whilst carrying your boat. There was a lot of
consideration of boat weight compared to speed
and a certain faction of paddlers tried in vain to find
a loophole in the rules that would help – sorry, no!
The winning score was 6 grueling laps in 30 minutes
and the gauntlet was thrown down for next year!
We rounded off the day’s events with the
NWWC Raft Race. A raft is, in many ways, a large
and cumbersome, flat-bottomed drifter. This was
a chance for our wonderful paddlers to see, first-
hand, the challenges our guides have in trying
to avoid running them over! It was lovely to see
guides and paddlers bonding in their bids for the
ANNETTE POWER coveted fastest run.
Although the band on Friday definitely
challenged this status, Saturday is the traditional
party night at T Fest. This year’s food highlight
was delicious homemade waffles with a difficult
choice of 4 equally wondrous toppings. Save Our
Rivers were on hand to raise awareness of water
and paddling issues around the world – the main
focus this time was WET (Wildwasser erhalten
Tirol). Our talk was hotly followed by the prize
giving for the day’s competition winners from our
brilliant event sponsors. The music and dancing,
as always, carried on into the early hours and the
party tent was truly rocked this year.

22 | CEUFAD