PADDLER
PADDLER
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MAPS OF THE AREA
The idea gave the club ’ s committee pause for thought , and there were some questions . How did this fit in with our approach to paddling trips abroad ? How could we assess the risks ? We decided to support Dasha in her ambitious plan . My first instinct was to get hold of some maps of the area . The key map at 1:50,000 scale had been out of print for a while , but we discovered an excellent series of 1:30,000 kayaking maps published by Briedis www . briedis . eu which we ordered from the Jana Seta map shop in Riga , Latvia , www . mapshop . lv , along with some bespoke printing of topographical maps .
The map room in the Cambridge University Library was also very helpful in coming up with older maps . We decided to limit the group size to six paddlers to keep it manageable , and Dasha prepared a risk assessment ( including what to do if we encountered
Joe in Mantas Atmanavicius ’ slalom boat . Photo : Dasha Surautsava
Matt paddling under a fallen alder trunk
A welcome lunch break at one of the splendid wooden shelters on the banks of the Gruda wolves and wild boar ), which the whole group owned . Dasha organised accommodation and hired our kayaks from www . upiukelias . lt (‘ The River Road ’) – a canoe and kayak rental service owned by Pranas Gataveckas based in Puvociai in the municipality of Varena . Three of us carried out a recce before the rest of the group arrived in early September .
DZUKIJA NATIONAL PARK
The Dzukija National Park is Lithuania ’ s largest protected area , covering over 500 square kilometres , and includes the country ’ s most extensive forest – 91 % of the park area is forest , mainly pines . The scattered villages within the park consist of traditional wooden houses and include the ethnographic reserve of Zervynos , which we visited at the start of one of our days paddling the Ula . The area is famous for its wild mushrooms – particularly chanterelles – with a ‘ Mushroom festival ’ in September when many Lithuanians come to gather these in large quantities . We gathered and cooked our own chanterelles from the forest one evening .
THE BOATS
The kayaks we hired were much more basic than the ones that we are used to paddling in the UK . They were all made by Roteko , with plastic seats and cockpits so wide that we could not use any of the spraydecks we had brought from the UK . Each day , representatives from Upiukelias would collect us from our accommodation , bring the boats , and take us to the get-in . The access points were clearly marked with large yellow signs , sometimes with wooden shelters , interpretation boards written in Lithuanian and often with associated campsites .
THE RIVERS
The four rivers we paddled are connected , with the Ula and Gruda feeding into the Merkys , which flows into the Nemunas . All the rivers are classed as Grade 1 to Grade 2 waters . We paddled each of the rivers to their confluence with the next until we reached the town of Merkine , which lies at the confluence of the Merkys with the Nemunas . Our navigation of the rivers was made much easier by the presence of wooden signs hanging from bridges in each of the towns that we passed through , announcing the name of the town . While we are used to tracking our location online using Google Maps or OS maps when paddling in the UK , we discovered that the online mapping app of choice in these parts is OsmAnd https :// osmand . net /.
THE RIVERS ULA AND GRUDA
We paddled the Ula from just below a weir in Rudnia , in successive sections each day , until its confluence with the Merkys . The Ula is characterised by its meandering nature and sandy cliffs , which are a designated nature feature , and large numbers of fallen pine and alder trees , which we were generally able to paddle under . A few fallen trees were impassable , so we had to get out and pass our kayaks over the top . The submerged trees did not pose much of a hazard as the flow was pretty slow at the time of our visit , the only real rapid being by the railway bridge at Zervynos . We stopped to look at a spring Ula Akis