First ledge drop above Winston Bridge

Image: © Andy Waddington Taken: 27 Oct 2010

The River Tees is a fine whitewater river with various sections suitable for trips at different grades. Barnard Castle to Winston Bridge is a longish section with various bits of grade 3 water, which goes in moderately low water, but can get very serious in high water. One of the places that presents problems is a pair of ledge drops just before the end. Big stoppers can form here, but protection is difficult to arrange as the river is too wide for throw lines. This is the first ledge drop, seen at low/medium water (about 0.7m on the Environment Agency gauge at Barnard Castle weir) when it could be run almost anywhere. Phil is taking a line that would work well in higher water, where the ledge projects downstream, giving less of a stopper, even in quite high flows.

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