It was 1.30am on the morning of Saturday 8 July when the team began the 18 hour journey; I say 18hours, but due to some suspect navigation (mentioning no names… Freddie Edwards and Ben Straughen) it brought the journey time to 24 hrs. The team consisted of Adam House, Ben Savage, Ben Straughan, Sam Panter (Bear), Freddie Edwards, Rob Hinds, Ed Grieg- Gran, Chris Parry, Giles Walker, Tom Colville, Matt Goff, Richard Straughan, Aidan Smallwood, Richard Hobson, Charlie Palmer, Jethro House. We were accompanied by Dan Owen, in order to keep control of the group (mainly to stop Bear getting out of hand!).

Pete Scott drove the minibus and trailer to Newcastle then took the ferry to Norway, meeting us at Haugesund airport. We then drove to the Sjoa valley and the team arrived at the Sjoa Adventure campsite in the early hours of Sunday morning; accommodation was in wooden chalets, each sleeping five boys. Sunday was our first days paddling and we were permitted a rare lie-in. We were then greeted by our guides, Ed Cornfield and a Tasmanian called Brent. We paddled the Sjoa play run as a ‘warm up’ but it was far bigger in velocity and volume than we had paddled before and gave us a taster of what was to come.
 
The next day, we paddled to Sjoa slalom run, which is based outside Ed Cornfield’s place (Sjoa Adventure - who run kayaking and rafting around the region). This run aimed to improve the technical skill of the group. However, although the river was not too difficult, Charlie managed to take a swim (bail) and would later face his bailing punishments! In the afternoon, the guys from last years trip paddled the Amot Gorge, a very difficult and technical section of grade 4 river. The rest of us were off to paddle the play run again to paddle the well known ‘Jorgen Play Wave’. At this stage, Jethro House managed to take the longest swim in Canoe Club history after bailing on the ‘Jorgen’ and was taken 3 km down-river, and as the water in the rivers is mainly snow melted from the glaciers, it can’t have been warm! The apres-kayaking activities were fishing, football, sessions of PS2 and movies, and water fights - attacking ‘The Bear’.

The following day consisted of a group of six setting off to climb Galdhøpiggen (2469 m), Norway’s highest mountain, after waking up at some ridiculous hour in the morning – and crossing the glacier in a whiteout and blizzard conditions. The rest of us paddled the river Ulla, a low volume, technical creek with lots of rock slides and waterfalls. Later that afternoon, we had a look at Ulla falls, consisting of a 5m freefall (most photographed waterfall in Norway), 4m slide and a 7m slide, all in a row. The nutcases of the group paddled these with great risk assessment.

On Day Four, we paddled a 14km section of the upper Sjoa, this was grade 3 with some sections of grade 4. This meant bigger volume with large stoppers, in which it was quite possible to get trapped. In the evening, it was a BBQ and sauna at Ed’s place before jumping in the ice cold river, which resulted in ‘Bear’ having his under garments taken and thrown in the river. Meanwhile Matt Goff was exerting great effort in getting to know a Leeds Uni student; he managed to steal her number somehow. Thursday breakfast, involved trying to trick Bear into eating ‘Sizzlers Dog Food’ and it worked! As we thought, Greig-Gran actually quite enjoyed the dog food. The group split with some going south to the Ringabu play wave and the others going back to the Jorgen play wave. The Ringabu was great for the inexperienced paddlers to learn new tricks - and the bailers were Freddie and Aidan! We then met for lunch at Ed’s place and half of us paddled the grade 4 Amot Gorge on the Sjoa. This included huge stoppers and rapids which were good fun and at the end of the gorge we all got out of the boats and did a ‘colossus’ cliff jump into the deep water of the gorge. During the evening we discovered how expensive Norway really is at £5 a pint.

Final day, Ed and Brent took us to the River Jori, which was a continuous grade 3+/4- river with hundreds of stoppers and pinning rocks — as Rich Straughan discovered. Aidan took a swim on a more challenging section but still booked himself in for two bailing punishments. On the final evening the bailers had their eyebrow’s shaved (one stripe for each bail!) and were then meant to be water bombed. However we all had the same plan and turned on Bear. All 15 paddlers from the week took arms and water bombed, egged, threw tomatoes and sprayed shaving foam in what can only be described as ‘peppering’ him! That evening we had a Mexican meal with Ed and Brent and a variety of awards. It was then time to pack up ready for the 3am start with an nine hour drive to Haugesund airport and the journey back home.

We returned home at 10pm on the Saturday night, while Pete Scott was the other side of the North Sea waiting for the ferry to bring the bus and trailer back. He returned by early Monday morning.

Speaking on behalf of the team we would like to thank all those involved for making it such a success. Ben Savage and Ben Straughan for cooking; without you we probably would have starved; Ed, Brent and Dan for the guiding and coaching as well as lots of laughs. Most importantly, our thanks to Mr Scott whose enthusiasm and drive was fantastic and without whom many of us would not be kayaking at all. Thanks for the hard work organising and running the trip, which none of us will forget.

Giles Walker