Water is graded. You are not.
Six grades of river exist and we run the first four. This page is the scale itself, so you can find where you stand on it before you ring anybody and ask.
Book a stretchFour grades of the same river.
A grade describes what the surface is doing, not how brave anybody is. The water beside this list is one stretch of the Dart, filmed once. It runs slow and wide at the bottom of the scale and quick and close at the top, and that is the whole of the difference between a first day and a fourth season.
- 01
Grade one
Moving water with small waves and one obvious line. There is nothing to read and nothing to avoid, and if you come out of the boat you stand up in it.
First day. No experience asked for
- 02
Grade two
Rapids with channels wide enough to see from the boat. You will be asked to steer rather than to hold on, and being asked to steer is the point of the day.
A first day that went well, or a second
- 03
Grade three
Waves irregular enough to fill an open boat and a line that has to be chosen before you are in it. We get out and walk the bank at the first two, every time, however well the group is going.
Two seasons. A calm swim, or a roll
- 04
Grade four
Powerful, continuous, and unforgiving of a decision made late. Rescue here is a skill the whole group carries, not a service the guide provides, and that is the honest way round.
Not sold to anybody we have not paddled with
Everybody asks which grade they are. Nobody is a grade. You are whatever you can get down twice in a day without thinking about the second one.
What the eight hours are.
Half of a guided day is not on graded water at all, which is the part people are surprised by and the part that makes the rest work.
- 08:30
The get-in
Boats off the trailer at the top of the stretch. Everything you need is in them; everything you brought that is not waterproof stays in the van.
- 09:00
Fitted, not handed
A boat that is loose is a boat you fight. Buoyancy aid, footrest and backband are set on the bank until each of them is right, and it takes half an hour because it needs to.
- 09:30
Flat water first
An hour of nothing happening: forward paddling, stopping, turning, and going in on purpose so that going in by accident is not the first time.
- 11:00
The first graded section
One rapid, scouted from the bank, run one boat at a time with a guide below it. Then it is run again, because the second time is the one you learn from.
- 13:00
Lunch on a gravel bar
Forty minutes. This is where people decide whether the afternoon is the same grade again or the next one, and both answers are fine.
- 15:30
The get-out
Boats up the bank, kit rinsed, and the stretch you have just run is named so you can look it up and know what you did.
Before you book a grade you have not run.
What happens if I capsize?
On grade one and two you come out, hold the boat, and stand up or swim to the bank on your back with your feet downstream, which we practise on flat water in the first hour. On grade three we position a guide below anything worth swimming and you are picked up inside a few seconds. Capsizing is not a failure of the day, it is a normal part of one.
Do I need to be able to swim?
Yes, well enough to be calm in moving water in a buoyancy aid. We do not ask for a distance and we do not test you, but somebody who panics in deep water will not enjoy any of this and we would rather say so now than at the get-in.
What do I bring?
Something warm that is not cotton, shoes that fasten and can get wet, a towel and a full change of clothes. Boat, paddle, buoyancy aid, helmet and cag are ours. Wetsuits are ours from October to April and yours to refuse in July.
What if the river is too high or too low?
We move the stretch, drop the grade, or cancel and refund in full, in that order, and we decide by nine the evening before from the gauge rather than by looking out of the window in the morning. A cancelled day is a cancelled day; we do not run a grade three group down a grade four river because it was booked.
Tell us what you have run.
Where you have paddled, when, and what you would like to run next. If you have never been in a boat, say that instead. Ninety-five pounds a person for a guided day, six to a guide, everything included.