Paula’s Funsized Adventures

Back in Norway again for the Sjoa festival. This is an exclusively kayaking festival, which means that you meet a lot more new kayakers as everyone is grouped together and you keep bumping into each other. After an epic journey with a jefe grande on a train (its a long story), I arrived in Sjoa. I ticked off some great runs, starting with two runs of the Sjoa Normal with Big Morten, Erik and Tone as a gentle warm up.

Per Chrisitan casting a watchful eye on the Strondelva.

Then I headed to the Ula with Lars Georg and German Benji to run some big slides and the triple drop (three waterfalls in quick succession), which have been on my list for a long time! Great day, especially when Lars pretended he wasn’t running the drops so I thought I was going to be the only one. Tuesday we headed to the Laagen Canyon - fairly large volume, quite continuous at grade and some interesting rapids - and one very interesting portage! That evening I paddled the Amot gorge on the Sjoa for the first time… I was wide eyed the whole way - what an awesome run! Wednesday the Norgies said that the were heading to Bora Bora (!!!) so I headed to the Upper Jordi with Nick Horwood and some other English… Again a steep low volume run with plenty of slides and drops to keep us entertained! Wednesday night saw the Pimp and Ho party so Thursday was a bit of a write off. Mark Burton and I headed to the Skjok wave and had a play.

On Friday we felt energetic again and headed with the whole Norwegian crew to the Skjerva and Finna. Putting in at the Skjerva and heading through the beatiful gorge of the Finna. It is a 10km run and is action stations all the way! Almost everyone got toasted at the toaster and all in all I enjoyed it so much - what a great crew and what a great river! I was SO tired at the end of that, that I decided not to enter the race at Amot. I got bullied into it by the Norwegians - it was a time trial to qualify for Saturday’s race. I managed to get through to the final. Saturday was race day - and I managed to slide into second place for the BoaterX!!! (Mens: 1.Michelle Ramazza, 2. Benji Hjort, 3. Felix, 4. Ed Smith Ladies: 1. Lyndsey Evans, 2. Paula Volkmer, 3. Marianne Seather). We partied hard that night and then it was sadly time to leave Norway again….. until next year! I can’t wait.

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