[mtb] Paddling up north on the weekend.

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 15:08:00

My sister and I drove north to Macksville (near Coffs Harbour) on the weekend to visit our Grandma. I took my Time Bandit with me so I could do some paddling while I was there. Last year in Geoquest I missed out on the Bellingen River paddle, as it is a popular spot for paddling and there are guided paddling tours and such there I was keen to have a go on it.

Seeing how I had the boat with me I thought it would be good to paddle from the Pacific Highway bridge over Warrell Creek out to Nambucca Heads. This creek/river was used in Geoquest in 2006, though as I was in the half I did not get to paddle in it then either.

I forgot to wear my HRM/GPS on Saturday paddling in the Bellingen river, when I started I decided to paddle upriver for 40 minutes to an hour and then turn around and start coming back down. I found this was probably not the smartest thing to do as the river was flowing fairly fast and whenever it narrowed there were easy grade 1 rapids, which though lots of fun to paddle downriver through were somewhat challenging to paddle up.

Instead I probably should have put in at Thora and paddled all the way out to the coast from there, which would have given me fun grade 1 rapids fairly often down to Bellingen then the lovely river paddle from there on. On Sunday I remembered the HRM/GPS so you can see the map or detailed data if you wish.

This paddle on Warrell Creek was a lot prettier than most of the paddling on Bellingen river I thought, on the whole a very pleasant few hours. The photos from both days can be seen on the page I put online for paddling Bellingen River and Warrell Creek.

sjh - mountain biking linux geek spice 19#2008-02-19_01 02 2008

[mtb] Paddling up north on the weekend.