For those who don’t know, the British Universities Kayaking Expedition (BUKE) happens every two years and involves a team of 6-8 university paddlers travelling to an unpaddled country or region with the explicit intent of kayaking new rivers/claiming first descents; the last expedition headed to the jungles of Borneo where their exploration was well rewarded! Application involves a two-page poster detailing experience and why you want to be on the team, from those, 20 applicants are selected for a long weekend of paddling in North Wales before a round of voting decides the final team. This year myself and my friend Osian were lucky enough to make it to the selection weekend!
The drive down was supposed to take 5 hours, but predictably the traffic was awful (with heavy rain starting as soon as we entered Wales) and it took more like 7. After arriving close to midnight we were welcomed by the organisers – Tim and Dave – then set about exploring the bunkhouse and meeting everyone. The accommodation was certainly more luxurious than expected (with actual mattresses and a working fridge), but it was still a tight squeeze; this may have been a good thing though, as it was quite chilly in the evenings.
Past selection weekends have been unlucky with water levels and resorted to hiking and safety scenarios, thankfully (due to the torrential rain on thursday evening) we had perfect levels for the Middle Conwy and Lledr on Friday! The Conwy was a nice warm up and gave us a chance to split into smaller groups and get to know each other. Most of us skipped ‘Staircase’ as the idea of an early morning beatdown wasn’t so appealing, but when it came to the ‘Gobbler’ (upper left) almost everyone had a go… there were a variety of lines – some more successful than others – and a couple of rides in the rather sticky hole at the bottom. The Lledr was a lot of fun with ‘Mincer’ (upper right) being a definite highlight! The run was fast and dropped a lot in elevation, I will never forget Ellis (the only one in our group to have run the river before) describing the line as “easy – middle, then right”, before we trained it down a rather technical Grade 4 where most would agree ‘easy’ was not the right word, including Ellis who got back-looped.
Friday night saw lots of chatting about the expedition and the day we’d just had – as well as a decent amount of drinking – but it was also the evening of destination proposals. Once the 20 of us had been selected for the weekend we were told to make a 5 minute presentation on our expedition destination, this would involve transport, pricing, weather, water levels, river mapping and monitoring of local politics. While a daunting task given most of us had little expedition experience, I think everyone came away with some new ideas! When the presentations were finished, Dave Manby (a pioneering expedition paddler) ripped apart all the locations… pointing out things we hadn’t thought of and challenging the research we had done; thoroughly enjoyable to witness, but not to experience. Voting then narrowed the locations down to 4 for the final team to choose between.
As many of us had hoped, the Fairy Glen was in on Saturday morning. None of us had paddled it before but it was a good level for a first time down so we split into groups of 5 and went from there. With lots of scouting (especially of Fairy Falls) the first run took us more than 3 hours, but the company was great and the scenery was even better with blue skies and autumn colours! We emerged from the gorge tired but pumped, the walls falling away and the sun low in the sky. Some people rushed off to the Glasglyn but about half of us wanted another run down the Glen, the second lap only took us 30 minutes but it was a chance to clean up some of the lines and properly get into the zone.
Saturday night included a masterclass on Google Earth by Bara and Pretam, followed by some rather interesting drinking games and a descent into topless karaoke. I’ll let the 2025 applicants figure out what 4-sheet flaming tails is. Sunday morning was a shock, but it was time for the team voting. Everyone was given a list of names and had to select the 6 people they thought would make the best team. Once the papers had been collected and the votes collated, a team of 7 were announced, including Osian, Bryony, myself, Alastair, Ellis, Oli and Matt (left-to-right above)! After a discussion with Tim, Dave and last years team it was time to head on home. To say we were happy with the weekend would be an understatement, and we came away with many more people to go kayaking with in the future!
After a team meeting last week, roles have been loosely assigned and the destinations are now being researched… make sure to follow the team Instagram and Facebook (linked below) to keep abreast of any updates including team introductions!
https://www.instagram.com/buke_uniyaker/?hl=en
https://www.facebook.com/uniyaker
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Patrick Kyak 