We kicked off the Tryweryn Festival weekend on Friday smashing down a couple of sunshine laps on the River Dee with some of the crew sessioning the low water play spots before heading across to the Tryweryn for the weekend ahead.
Day 1
It was my first time on the Tryweryn so obviously I went and took part in the mass start race straight away. There were roughly twenty-five people racing down from Miss Davies’ Bridge to the rafters get out, it was absolute carnage – everyone getting super close and in each other’s way. It was a good laugh. Trying to get into the eddy at the bottom and get to the finish line was tough, with people crashing into the eddy, piling on top of each other – it was absolutely nuts!
The next event was the boater-X, head-to-head racing three or four at a time of the start ramp. The stoke was high and so was the tension, with everyone wanting to get through the next round no one was putting up an easy fight for first place in there qualifying heat, unfortunately I was knocked out the first round not making it through to the qualifiers. After all the events, I went for a little side quest, asking Grant (Palm’s product engineer) to show me all the lines and play spots.
The next event for the day was based around Cafe Wave, where big moves, beatings and all the cringe become part of the fun, having Paul (aka Cheesy, Palm’s brand manager) on the commentary took everything up a notch, causing as much mayhem as he possibly could.
The final event of the day consisted of our event the Palm Enduro – thirty minutes of paddling as many laps of the Graveyard section as possible, and running the shuttle back up, the ultimate test of physical endurance with some of the troops managing over seven full laps within the thirty minutes.
At some point in the day, it was pouring! After a long day of paddling I realised I made the rookie error of leaving my shoes out in the rain. Lesson learnt!
Day 2
We kicked off day two with the Palm Throw Bag Olympics. This year’s Throw Bag Olympics was something else, the second Cheesy shouted ‘GO’ there were throw bags galore, everywhere you looked there was a throw bag flying through the sky, there was madness and a lot of mischievous behaviour, especially from Sam Fitz who gave up on competing to mix things up a little.
The rest of Sunday was spent paddling joy laps with the crew sessioning all the spots, pulling some tricks, squeezing into micro eddies trying new moves the lot, to spend the weekend paddling laps on such an epic section of river was just absolutely insane and to paddle with some of the super young shredders and seeing how far they have come along after seeing them not that long ago in October at the 2023 Park Jams was just so great to see.
And that is for T-Fest 2024, big thanks to all the organisers for making things happen and to everyone for making it a sick weekend, with that being said I will leave you with this photo of me doing a cheeky wee legs-out shudder rudder 🤪
T-Fest see youse next year ? – Cam Tickner
