We’re STILL in lockdown. STILL no paddling (at least in the UK). BUT. If you could get out and paddle, where is the first place you would head for right now? This is the fourth set of replies. 

We asked some of our valued contributors to the Paddler magazine for their answer, which started over the Easter weekend and we will feature those answers from the four corners of the planet. Paddlers will feature in the order they sent their replies.

Read series 1: https://paddlerezine.com/where-in-the-world-would-you-have-paddled-this-easter/
Read series 2: https://paddlerezine.com/where-in-the-world-would-you-have-paddled-this-easter-2/
Read series 3: https://paddlerezine.com/where-in-the-world-would-you-have-paddled-this-easter-series-3/

Claire O’Hara
Hawea and Tekapo white water parks, New Zealand

If life was back to normal, I would absolutely love to be paddling in New Zealand right now. Powered by Easter eggs, I would be enjoying an Easter weekend surfing the crystal clear (freezing cold) water of the Hawea and Tekapo white water parks. Throwing down back to back freestyle tricks on the park’s amazing waves and holes. Between sessions I would head to the stunning nearby lakes and enjoy some good food by the water, surrounded by incredible mountains and natural beauty. 

Martin Trahan
Poisson Blanc Regional Park, Quebec, Canada

I’m a health professional working with elderly people. I’m also a caregiver taking care of my 101-year old grandma still living in her house. I’m exhausted, I need some time off and I’m dreaming about going back canoeing in the wilderness. Through the emptiness felt this winter and the Covid-19 outbreak, I need more than ever to get back in my canoe. I get closer to happiness one adventure at a time

The Poisson Blanc Regional Park is a vast area dedicated to outdoor recreation in the province of Quebec in Canada. The park’s territory mainly evolves around the beautiful Poisson Blanc reservoir, a lake of 85 km2 dotted with a hundred islands on which are located wild campsites. Rustic and isolated, they offer an exceptional camping experience on a vast stretch of water without any close neighbours. Relaxation, nature and greatness. You can be using this amazing playground by canoes, kayaks or paddleboards. Too few people allow themselves to go on an adventure. But those who do know how beneficial the experience is.

Photo: Yan Kaczynski

Jakub Sedivy
Corsica, France

For Easter I would go to Corsica. I love and miss the island. There is just no other place like that. Corsica is usually the first whitewater melt in Europe in April and as such it attracts a lot of paddlers who are keen to get on the water after a long winter. I love the feeling of getting on the ferry and meeting a lot of my friends I have not seen for a long time. You can just sit back, relax and await the view of the white peaks above the meditearean sea. Corsica is not only about kayaking but also about meeting a lot of friends and about the cultural experience.

Where else can you paddle close to the snow line in the morning, eat the oysters at the beach by an old roman port in the afternoon and enjoy evening barbecue with many of your friends while drinking local wine? 

So yes,  just writing about it makes me smile and I may go to the cellar and check if there is a bottle of Corsican wine for this evening 🙂

Bruce Kemp
Pine Barrens region, New Jersey, USA

The Pine Barrens region of Southern New Jersey is an Unexpected Wilderness of about a million acres in close proximity to some of the most densely populated regions of the US east coast. It is a unique eco-region known for its rare plants and tannin-stained streams, dense groves of Atlantic white cedar and jack pine, and the area’s rich history dates back to colonial times.

Besides the remote, wilderness feel so frequently encountered in here, the topography and hydrology of the Pine Barrens combine to create unusual conditions for paddling. What strikes most folks is the small size of the streams. Here they call ‘em rivers – the Batsto, Mullica, Wading, Oswego – but back home we’d call them creeks. The relatively small geographical area of South Jersey doesn’t allow enough space for the streams to develop much significant size, or for that matter length, before they dump into the Delaware Bay or the Atlantic Ocean. Indeed, in the Barrens most paddling is of necessity single file. 

The Barrens rivers are fed primarily by constant upwellings from the shallow aquifer below, with comparatively little contribution from tributary run-off. Because of this, there is a stronger current than you just would expect in such flat terrain with only a barely discernible gradient. An ‘insistent’ current, if not exactly ‘pushy’. 

Like streams in flat terrain everywhere, these rivers meander, and that in the extreme. Numerous sharp and usually blind bends, many of 90 degrees or better, come up quickly and continuously. Not to mention the occasional overhanging limbs or submerged logs that require maneuvering to avoid. And all of this with a pretty decent current behind you.

For lovers of remote, intimate, intricate streams, the Pine Barrens is a premier paddling destination.

Kevin Callan
Thames River, Ontario, Canada

I live a couple of hours north of the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Easter usually has me out paddling. Not in the north. Most of the lakes aren’t free of ice yet. I go south, flushing my canoe down one of the country creeks or rivers, the ones that are swollen by the spring melt. 

My favourite has to be the Thames River, located in southwestern Ontario. It certainly has a Huck Finn flavour to it. You drift past cities, hamlets, and corn fields. It’s definitely not my usual riverside views of boreal spruce and pine. The trees change to southern Carolinian tulip, paw paw, Kentucky coffee and sassafras. 

Campsites were a mix bag. I’ve pitched my tent on farm fields and backyards. My last trip down the Thames was an eight day journey  – from Woodstock to Lighthouse Cove on Lake St. Clair. There was a heat wave and I had some guy wander into my campsite one night and try to convince me that the Ku Klux Klan was a good organization to join. But overall it was an amazing trip. It runs a full 300 plus kilometres and is the most southern watercourse in Canada. Surprisingly, the river is mostly wild; except for brief encounters with golf courses and road bridges.

My video series about my time spent on the Thames is up on my KCHappyCamper You Tube channel.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MfwZP-f_WA

Eric Deguil
Grand Canyon, Colorado, USA

Like you and most of humans, i’m confined. Crazy times! I stay home with my daughter, painting, playing, pushing her tiny kayak on the skateboard. I train in my garage every days, pushing and pulling weight. I improved most of my personal best on bench press and deadlift and i shape my paddle during this waiting time at 500 metres from my home river.

The place where i would love to be right now is, where I was last year at same date – the Grand canyon of Colorado and pooping in a box. Hahaha! It may be the best place to be confined.

Honestly, this is not just a river. You are paddling in the desert, where the history of our planet is present and evolving. Slowly pushed downstream, you can read Earth’s story like a book. Most of the mistakes and good actions we did are in this canyon. The best place to understand how to improve our actions and balance our relation with the nature. Something that the actual COVID-19 is doing. As I always learned on river, be the water or be eaten.

Sandra Hyslop
Ontario and Quebec rivers, Canada

It’s the time of year where the snow and ice start melting in eastern Canada and rivers go from being big-water to crazy-insane-scary-humongous-water. Let your lockdown daydreams take you to the land of Poutine and beaver-tails where Stakeout season is about to begin! When the snow-melt hits Ontario and Quebec the rivers swell and incredible standing waves develop perfect for getting airborn in a stubby playboat.  

Big-wave springtime surfing on rivers such as the Ottawa, Mistassibi and Rouge rivers is quite possibly the most fun a girl can have on the water.  Couple that with some excellent (terrifying) creeking opportunities and some great company (Quebec Connection have a great sense of humour and a lot of knowledge about the area) and I can’t think of anywhere better to be at this time of year!

Steffan Meyric Hughes
Upper White Nile, Uganda

If I could be paddling anywhere this weekend, it would be the place that I’m still hoping to revisit later this year, which is the Upper White Nile in Uganda. It’s hardly a surprising or original choice. It is in fact (or was) the mecca for European freestyle paddlers. Things have changed with two recent dams. With the loss of the Nile Special wave train (home to the world famous Nile Special and Club waves), many might have thought all was lost. 

In reality, the White Nile is such a broad, braided river, with so much reliable, year-round volume (it’s lake-fed and equatorial – so always sunny, always good flows!), new features are being discovered all the time. A recent series of videos from Uganda resident Sam Ward, who runs ‘Live It Love It’ to cater for visiting paddlers, shows various features, newly formed by the change in the river since the dam, or recently rediscovered, including the well-named Phoenix Wave and the Real Deal Wave. 

The well-loved Superhole is still there. I’d love to try them and also to run the freakish drop called Kalagala Falls that I didn’t tick off last time. My memories are of drinks on the NRE balcony, frisbee golf on the (now submerged) Hairy Lemon island, huge, friendly, warm-water rapids, laughing locals, kids shouting ‘mzungu’, red earth and black, starry skies. It’s a special place largely unknown outside the freestyle paddling world and I’d love to return this winter. 

George Harrap
Upper Swale, Yorkshire, UK

As the lockdown continues and another day off the water passes by, it seems our memories of exhilarating days become increasingly powerful rather than distant.  A kayaker’s desire to cast off with fellow enthusiasts grows ever stronger and there is no need for debate around how good that first paddle stroke, ferry glide or boof will feel. For most, being back on the water will not be a story of adrenaline and extremes, instead highlighting the importance of the people we choose to spend our free time with.  When I think back to epics and adventures rarely does the quality of a particular line or move overtake the importance of who was present.  So, firstly with who, and secondly where, would I head if circumstances were different?

The first question is arguably easier than the second for reasons aforementioned.  There’s no need for names, simply that old friends with strong northern accents would be present.  The location has to be the infamous Upper Swale in the Yorkshire Dales. Never has a river struck more fear into the aspiring club paddler but at sensible levels the reality is more accessible than you might expect.  I once heard it stated that the Keld section rises and falls more quickly than any other in the UK, perhaps contributing to its elusiveness in the days before online river levels and rain chasers.  For me, this sub two-kilometre 4/4+ (5) section of pool drop rapids is like an old friend and one I strongly suggest you become aquatinted with when the time is right.  In terms of clean drops on which to finesse your boof stroke and entry angle Rainby is simply without compare.  The locality of a hot tub and self-service tearoom are simply a bonus!

Words: George Harrap. Photo: Mark Ollett

Angela Ward
Llyn Padarn, Wales, UK

My memories of visiting Llyn Padarn for the very first time are as crystal clear as the water on that fateful day, back on Saturday October 31st 2015. I’d volunteered to take part in a clean-up campaign around the lagoons, organised by Surf-lines (now Snowdonia Watersports). As I didn’t have my own boat, I was allowed to borrow one of their fleet. As luck would have it, they had some used canoes for sale, one of which was a Mad River Explorer 15. 

As soon as I started paddling, I knew this boat and I belonged together. It was no longer just a canoe and it became ‘My Paddy’, named after where we first met. 

Being gently rocked on the water whilst gazing at Snowdon in the distance, silhouetted against the clear blue Welsh skies, was a magical experience. Since then, Paddy and I have been on so many awesome adventures and have met amazing people. He’s carried me on the water and I’ve carried him across mountains. 

No matter where we go and what we do, being on Llyn Padarn is like coming home for both of us.

Graham Warren
Inverpolly, Scotland, UK

Each Easter, my wife Susan and I drive up to Scotland with the canoe to explore a little, and spend a few days in a different world. We had planned to set off this Easter Monday to one of our special places which we are fairly sure we will have completely to ourselves.

We were to park at the Ledmore River Gate, on the fringes of Inverpolly. Virtually everyone who puts in here heads downstream onto Cam Loch, then on to Loch Veyatie, but we head upstream instead, paddling against the current on this small but handsome river. After a quarter of a mile, a smaller stream flows in from the right. It looks rather insignificant, lost amidst the rushes, but it has a secret; it leads up to a hidden, magical place. If you turn into this stream, you can paddle or pole up to the base of the falls, then a portage takes you eventually up to Loch Urigill. Here there are islands to explore and a shingly beach where we like to camp. There is even a modest mountain to climb. The views at sunset over to Cul Mor and Suilven are truly out of this world.

Jessie Stone
Saanen River, Switzerland

If I could get out and paddle over Easter weekend, the first place I would head is to the beautiful Saanen River in Saanen, Switzerland. Pristine, intimate, scenic, and wild feeling gorges with a wonderful mix of fun river running and some nice play features all the way down! It’s a short run, but you can make it as long as you’d like depending on how much time you spend playing!  And you can walk the shuttle and do the run by yourself if your paddling partner has corona or has not had corona yet – depending on what the situation may be!

Of course, I advocate this for myself, but you need to know what your own level of paddling is and paddle way below that level if you are going by yourself! This run is a wonderful re-introduction to spring and paddling in the Northern Hemisphere every year for me, and I never get tired of it!