Just got back from a trip to Austria where the focus was not paddling, but more relaxing and doing other sports. The group was quite big with Lieke, Bas, Lizzy, Merel Sjon and me. Although paddling was not the focus, we did paddle some rivers with everybody.

We had some runs in the Drau Welle, but I noticed my shoulder doesn’t like freestyling yet, and I am far from getting back in holes. Luckily I am getting used to not paddle (freestyle) on my top and have fun paddling easier rivers with friends. We stayed at the Raft Camp in Ainet and paddled the raft section multiple times so Lizzy got all confident on it.

Lieke and me walked up a mountain one day, to find a sweet ‘berghütte’ where we ate Apfelstrudel. Four hours and 800+ meters in height we were back again, a tough walk. The next day we both felt our legs, but we decided to do a very hard Klettersteig and ignore the pain. Haha, so two days after the initial walk our legs hurted so bad that even walking to the toilet wasn’t all too pleasant.

I helped Haico out one day at the kayak course from Zwalker to paddle the Defferegenbach with a intermediate group. It was a superfun day where the group itself had to scout with us to see how to paddle the cataracts or walk. For me and Haico it was quite exciting as we both had never done the river with an intermediate group. It turned out well and after we did a quick run down the Tunnelstrecke on the same river. Having done this I am thinking about instructing some courses next summer, should do so I think..

The rest of the holiday was filled with endless sunbading, bars, WeiBenbier, coffee and everything else a relax holiday needs.

Thanks everybody, it was a great end of the summer!

Cheers, Raoul