2.B Ireland: Drink a pint of Guinness and do the Liffey Descent

Now just to get it out the way yes I have had a pint of Guinness before and I am not the biggest beer drinker so I am not overly fond of it but this was the first full pint I had ever drunk in Ireland.

Now that's out the way onto the Liffey.

The Liffey Descent is an annual canoe and kayak race which this year celebrated its 50th year. The race itself includes 11 or so “obstacles” including various different drops over weirs, rapids and a jungle area complete with rogue logs that like to jump out and surprise unsuspecting paddlers.

Now I was very nervous at the start of the race, even though we where not racing I do not have a huge amount of white water experience and was relying a lot on my team mate to get me down “dry”. Which after all I had head from the members of Staffordshire Canoe Club I was with was something that we should have been able to accomplish.

The race is divided into two with a portage (moving the boats out of the water) in the middle. The first half of the race features a few weirs and finished with “The Lake” which is a huge slog across open water which removes the last traces of energy you have, but after some lucozade, chocolate and a cereal bar I was ready for the second half.

The second half features what I believe to be the harder, or more terrifying, weirs. You start by getting into a boat and immediately trying to get through a set of rapids under a bridge, if you get this slightly wrong not only could you be swimming but you may end up with a boat wrapped round a bridge which isn't very useful to anyone. Once through you move down river dropping down each of the four remaining weirs. The most worrying weir we faced, which according to my team mate was the one on which we where most likely to swim was Parmeston. Once you drop you break through the first standing wave. once trough you can put in about 2 paddles before being thwacked head on by the second, at this point your sinuses are clear and the front man (in this case me) is completely hidden under the wave from the person in the back so if you are not read you are washed straight out of the boat and out of the bottom of the weir. Lucky we survived the waves sinuses clear and continued down the river.

In our Class we came in 55th place with a time of 3:43:26 but more importantly we got down dry! Which for my first Liffey was a brilliant achievement and my heart felt thanks goes out to all those members of Staffordshire Canoe Club that helped me in this endeavour.

There are a couple of photos of me in the boat which can be found here

Failure

Now I have completed another item on my list, however I felt I would write a general post before I updated the blog again.

It occurs to me that there is only three and a half months left of this year and I am imminently returning to university to begin my final year, this has lead me to think a lot about the possibility of failing to complete items on my list. Now this does sadden me but not as much as I thought it might.

You see I proposed this list to make myself get off my bottom and take my life into my own hands and make things happen to me instead of waiting for them to come along, and in completing all the things I have I have had a much more active and memorable year than any other on record. Now my hope here is that this will of course continue on into the future and I will not be limited to just 21 things to do in one year but instead hundreds of things across my(hopefully long and healthy) lifetime.

So as the clock strikes twelve this year I hope that I will not return to my usual depressive stupor wishing for something to come along and throw my life up and bring me some much needed excitement, but will instead look back at this blog and my accomplishments and will look forward to 2010 and all the new adventures it will bring.

1. Visit a New Country - Venice

So this i thought for a while would turn out to be one of the items I might fail at the end of the year. Turns out I was wrong.

A few weeks ago I decided I had had enough of being the one stuck at home and would go away for a weekend with my girlfriend. So I started looking round the internet for a few deals eventually I found a nice deal in Venice. Well what we thought as Venice but actually turned out to be a half an hour train ride from Venice.

So we packed our bag boarded our plane and where on our way to Venice. The first night we took a wonder around the area of the hotel and realised that there was nothing around! So we got a Pizza (I ordered in appalling Italian but we did get what we asked for) and went back to the hotel.

The second day we where going into Venice so asked for directions to the train station and started to walk. After 2 hours of walking around, asking 3 people in Italian for directions and then meeting a very nice man who drove us to the station, he was also kind enough to tell us that our hotel was terrible, and we boarded a train to Venice (without a ticket!).

Now Venice is a beautiful City there was lots to see and we walked around for several hours in the gorgeous Mediterranean, however we soon realised that we had basically seen everything! Now as i said it was all very beautiful and I am very glad I have seen it (before it sinks) but we soon realised that this was by no means somewhere to spend a weekend. So my advice is that if you want to see Venice then definitely go, but only as a day trip when you are touring other parts of Italy.

Our third and final full day in Italy was a Sunday, now unfortunately as a catholic country (and because our hotel was naff) everything was closed. We spent the day in the hotel room playing cards mostly popping out briefly for a walk around the streets of closed shops. This was also the day I finally worked out the Air conditioning system, which we could have done with when we first arrived!

In all it was a good trip, however it has also taught me a lot about booking your own holiday and hopefully next time I will be able to book something slightly less eventful!

Photo’s to follow!