Raid Gallaecia Expedition Race 2017

Raid Gallaecia - Paddle hard!

Pyro / 08.05.2017

It's been a fast, warm and slightly frantic start to Raid Gallaecia 2017. 

After receiving their route books, watching a fly-over video, and hosting the usual round of 20 Questions about intricacies of the course last night, the initial gathering and map give-out in the town square of As Pontes this morning started off that anticipatory feeling. Teams had one hour to study the maps of the first four race sections and relate all of those intricacies to the topography before the gun sounded and the race got underway. Taking a direct route out of town, the opening trekking leg took the teams straight into the hills, overlooking As Pontes, it's lake (formerly an opencast coal mine) and the huge power station that dominates one side of the small town, climbing on a small but well-defined trail through the heather and gorse, slightly reminiscent of Scotland or Wales but much, much warmer. Once up on top, through small trails and gravel roads, access for the windfarms that adorn the hilltop and dominate the skyline - a landscape of power generation, it seems.

After a couple of fairly significant undulations, the trek ended at a quiet recreation and picnic site, where the long kayak leg started. This one was a stage-of-many-parts; first a beautiful but low-volume river, then a large reservoir, then a portage round a dam, then an urban river with weirs and small portages, then the huge lake, then downstream again into another huge reservoir. And the early paddling was not without its consternations; Sweco were first onto and off the first paddle, but only by seconds, with the Czech Blackhill OpavaNet and the French Naturex teams in very hot pursuit. With such tight bunching at the front, the narrow slipway at the start of the portage quickly became a logjam, the marshals trying to clear a gap which quickly became blocked by other teams, rallying to get their boats onto their portage trolleys and begin the winding trot down the road back towards town. While it didn't look like any obstruction of other teams was deliberate, you never know what's going on in the heads of racers when the competition is so close.

As the teams relaunched and paddled towards town, there were more issues, with a crowded steep bank to descend, with only a handful of possible launching points to use. Urtzi Iglesias, fresh off the back of racing at Huarisinchi, is acting as navigator and translator for the Swedish 24 Hour Meals team, and hopped back into his seat to start paddling while his teammate Matts Andersson was still helping their other boat down the steep bank to the water. Feeling a tug on the paddle and kitbag he was holding, Andersson calmly replied with "No, Urtzi, I want to come in the kayak too". 

The weirs on the river into town caused a few moments of consternation too. Advised to the teams asa 'mandatory portage', at least one of them was too large and rough to be descended comfortable in the race boats, the usual batch of two-man sit-on-tops. One was smaller, and while most teams we saw hopped out and pulled the boats carefully around the edge, a few took it as a fun slide and ploughed straight through. At least one swim ensued, proving that even the smallest weir wasn't quite as straightforward as anticipated.

After another long portage, avoiding the section where the river becomes canalised through the power station site, teams launched again onto the lake for an out-and-back leg, along the lake shore and back, launching near and passing back past one of the two giant digging machines that extracted the coal from this huge site. They stand now only as a monument, and as a nice backdrop for kayaking pictures.