It's out of season now, so the operation is a bit basic - just two employees, both at the base at Vieillevie. The first of these has the job of taking your money and acting reassuring. We asked about the time for the trip back down the 10km run of the river, and he said that with the water level as it is at the end of the summer we could reckon on two hours if we paddled hard, and two and a half if we took it easy. The other employee drove us up to Entraygues in a small minibus, and opened up the canoe base there. He found us life jackets, paddles, and canoes, and told us that we were welcome to have one of the many brand new and unused crash helmets, but nobody else used them. He gave us "un briefing", telling us to take the first cataract, the weir, on the left, the next two on the right, though when we get to "La Pierre Plate" we could if we wished go over the top of the flat stone for a bit of amusement.
There were just the six of us, a young couple, and old couple of bikers, and us 60-year olds. We pushed off first. I was in some doubt about getting through without a ducking, as my one previous trip had had me in the water at the first major cascade. This time, though, we were expecting much less in the way of white water so I felt I ought to be confident. We sailed over the weir, no trouble in doing it but I was surprised at the flow of water there. Then we approached the place where I had had previously gone in, and it was pretty vigorous but we stayed upright and got pretty wet with waves over the bows. We reached the Pierre Plate - we could see the rapids but there was no sign of the stone, so we picked a route and went down the roller-coaster, again just keeping in the canoe. The remaining rapids were all pretty entertaining too, but we stayed onboard all the way down. In between, the scenery was a delight, the water was cool and the sun was hot, the banks of the Lot towered above us with low oak woods all the way up (and a very occasional house lost in the trees), and we either paddled or relaxed and let the stream take us.
We got back to the Viellevie base feeling the journey had been quicker than we'd expected, and had a little trouble beaching the canoe as the current past the landing place was quite strong.
The reassuring young man asked if we'd enjoyed ourselves (we certainly had). He then said that when we had left Vieillevie to go upstream to start the trip, the river had been flowing at 25 cubic meters a second, but that shortly afterwards EDF had turned on the electricity at one of their dams upstream and by the time we got back the river was doing 90 cubic meters a second - a good springtime flow. We'd got back after an hour and a half, as the flow was twice as fast as normal for the time of year. Oh - we said. Maybe that was why we hadn't seen the Pierre Plate - it was under a meter of (fast) water. So we'd had a proper descent in good vigorous conditions, and had a really good time too.
Here are the two navigators enjoying a rest afterwards, in front of a couple of inflatables (must be the easy way?):
and here just me, with a gentle bit of the river behind:
I am sure no future summer visitor will be able to escape a canoe trip with me - it was that much fun. On a two-person canoe there's much less by way of paddling hard to keep up with others who are themselves paddling hard to keep up with you. And it's a great way to see the river and its banks in comfort (if it's warm enough) and with the occasional adrenaline rush thrown in.
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