Plattling Playboating World Cup

Plattling World Cup: Thrilling kayaking action at a competitive event.

So. We left Nottingham at 5 on Tuesday to catch the ferry at midnight from Dover. We then drove through the night into Germany, finally stopping as it got light for a few hours kip. Then we carried on driving on the autobahn (through really big traffic jams) to Plattling. On the way we got some info saying that they weren’t sure when the event would start as the area had be hit by epic amounts of rain, but we were still hopeful it would run.

When we got there we jumped straight on the wave and had a quick blast, before retiring to the local Stern Cafe for food and a beer after such a long drive. All this time it had rained and was still raining the next day, but I got up early and had a session on the wave. There were only 2 of us on the water, couldn’t complain but the wave was rising whilst we were on and it was getting harder and harder to stay on. By about 9 it had washed out completely :( so the rest of the day was spent in the stern Cafe, whilst it continued to rain.

The organisers were trying to decide what to do, the water still rising, finally on Friday they decided to cancel the event and the results from Ausburg were used for the overall World Cup Series. So we headed to Ausburg for the day to train in the hole there. I was pretty gutted the event was cancelled, the hole looked like at normal levels it would be awesome for a competition, definitely a place to head back to when it’s not flooded!

The next day we headed down south, to hopefully warmer climes to Lienz in Austria to start training for the Europeans, and that’s where we’ve been since, training twice a day, and chilling by the local pool. The area is amazing, the Austrian Dolomites rise straight from the town. Team training starts on Monday, everyone is starting to arrive, it looks like it’s going to be a great event. :)