On the 3rd Gidea Park Scout Group's Summer Camp in 1991 we visited Symonds Yat. The three new Ventures, Mark, Jem and Craig planned a canoeing expedition along with leader Allan Tench.

We discovered that there was a lengthy stretch of water starting up stream of Hereford and ending at Symonds Yat that had no rapids.

We picked Bridge Sollars as our start point with the plan of camping just downstream of Hereford on our first night.

All equipment, clothes, sleeping bags tents etc was packed in the canoes.

We took water proof desposeable (reuseable) cameras with us.

The tranquil water

We stopped next to some boys fishing under a road bridge in Hereford Town Center for lunch before pressing on in the afternoon.

We had a map so that we could work out where we were but its difficult to get lost on a river when paddling downstream. Their appeared o be very few other river users except for the occasional raft left seemingly abandoned on the bank.

The pictures were taken on one of Kodak's then new, disposable (recycleable), waterproof cameras.  The camera was tied to the deck lining and spent most of the journey floating in the river and worked fine.

We camped on a beach by the river side in the middle of nowhere.  Because none of us had waterproof watches we had no clock with us.  We went to sleep before it was dark as we were so tired and got up when we woke up.

Another bridge.

We had planned to spend the second night at a campsite just downstream of Ross-on-Wye.  When we were half way to Ross, we stopped for lunch and asked a local for the time.  When he replied with "Half Past Ten" we realised that we would probably be in Ross by midday and could be home by the evening. 

Shortly before arriving in Ross a Harrier flew so low over us that the water vibrated enough to almost capsise us!

Our only mishaps were Jem disturbing a swan which then chased Mark at take off speed downstream and later mark getting the front of his canoe wedged under a branch which forced part of the cockpit under the water, thus sinking his boat.  It was quickly drained and no kit was lost.

We arrived at Symonds Yat in the early evening and Mark strangely elected to forgo the pleasure of a pint and hiked up the hill to the camp site to Get Allen to pick us up.

The Pub.