With the limited season and all the traveling I do I have had very few chances to paddle in Nova Scotia over the last couple of years. I was really excited to find out that the Medway river was running at prime flows for playboating when I was home last week.

At home cartwheeling

Rounding up people to go boating with is always an entertaining episode at home. My buddy Phil is no exception and the reason why I say this. The night before we went paddling he wasn’t sure if he was going to go boating because he had a few trees in his back yard that he was tapping for maple syrup. As it turned out the few trees were actually about 200 including a lot of his neighbours. Anyway he got one of his neighbours to keep an eye on it while we went boating. I showed up in the morning ready to go after flying in late the night before, the first thing I saw was some weird metal thing that looked like a go-kart. It turned out that it was Phil’s sap boiler (couldn’t think of a better name) and it was huge! He had over 500 litres of sap in a huge vat and had it set up so it auto filled his sap boiler as it boiled down. When I got closer I found him and his neighbour cutting up pallets for fire wood with his chain saw, one holding the pallet in the air and the other cutting it up, total red neck style! Anyway I guess what I’m getting at with all my rambling is that my early departure time got delayed a little bit.

Like paddling in iced tea

I’ve been going to the Medway since I first started paddling and it is still one of my favourite places. Basically there are three great holes back to back that you can do any of the new moves in, and any of the old ones! I learned to cartwheel, loop etc. on the Bangs Falls section of river and haven’t lost any of my love for the area over the years. It was great to see lots of familiar faces and local paddlers on the river! It was even greater to go back to Phil’s afterwards and sit in his new hot tub for four hours.

Fishers hole is great for loops!

Unfortunately my stay in Nova Scotia was once again a short one as Canadian Team Trials are being held this weekend in Montreal. Canada is breeding some amazing wave paddlers that are going to kill it at Worlds, I can’t wait to see what happens!

 Check out this little video from Fishers Hole:

Kelsey Thompson