The Extreme Swim Team gathered again for their 2009 Alps trip and were joined by Team Small and Tom and Steve (who were later hard core enough to join EST). The journey started out with a trip to Sunderland hospital to pick up Lou from work and to have our pre holiday photos taken with James Yates! Chris took the 6 hour drive to Dover like a man and wouldn't let anyone else have a go. And then came the start of Team Vom, the main members being Jo and Lou, sea sickness isn't very pleasant.
On Saturday we managed a grand total of visiting 8 countries. Once hitting Austria, Mark, Chris, Lou and Jo incurred 120euro fine for not having a vignette and then when close to leaving the country they managed to have a blow out and meet the Austrian Police yet again!
Finally everyone was in Slovenia (apart from Ela and Kev who would join us around 9am Sunday morning) and ready for bed after a beer or two.
Sunday morning saw Team Small pimp their boats and the boys look at the damage to the tyre.
So 12 keen boaters hit the water from the campsite for their first paddle of the holiday, the girls (apart from Lou) got out and let the boys run the gorge. This saw Lou having a pin underwater and Mike dislocating his shoulder. After numerous attempts from Chris and Lou they failed to pop it back in, and so Ela took Mike and Annie to the medical centre and then to the hospital for him to be well and truly bandaged up!
The next day saw Jo have her first swim of the holiday - she still maintains that she only went in for a dip to cool herself down!!! On this section of the river we found a tributary that the boys and Lou wanted to investigate so Jo, Ela and Naomi took up the job of pro photographers to capture the moments.
In all we managed to paddle all sections of the So?a and our last day in Slovenia saw our trip Cannoning with a 45minute climb up the mountain to then chuck ourselves off the waterfalls and slides into freezing cold water, we still had a great time though. Annie joined us for this and Mike and Jim climbed up with us and met us at varying points where they could clamber down and take photos of the group.
Saturday saw us leave Annie and Mike to finish their travels without us and EST and Team Small travelled to Austria to near Prutz. We arrived in Austria to rain rain and more rain. We found ourselves a small campsite and took up a small corner with our 5 tents and boating kit. Saturday night saw us going out for pizza as we couldn't be bothered to cook in the rain.
Sunday morning we woke up to more rain and cold weather, so Lou dragged the boys off to paddle the Tosens section of the Inn which was in flood and Team Small refused to paddle as we don't paddle in the cold and wet! We wanted to be warm and dry, after a few persuasive pleads we talked the rest of the group into going to the Thermal Spa.
This has to be the highlight of the holiday for me, or one of the most memorable activities we took part in. There were three thermal pools outside with varying temperatures which were brilliant to relax in, and then we decided as a group to visit the saunas and steam rooms, Tom and Naomi opted out of this and stayed in the relaxing thermal pools.
So, eight of us headed into the saunas not quite sure what to expect only to find a great big naked Austrian man striding past us. There was no going back at this point, we had just scanned our cards through so were going to have to pay.
We took this in our stride, while Jo, Ela and Lou all looked very awkwardly at each other, the boys had stripped off and were already in the salt bath. We decided to keep our bikini bottoms on for now, or at least until we were shouted at in German and told to take them off (we think that's what he said!)
The next couple of days saw us paddling the rivers around Austria, Team Vom at its best, stopped at traffic lights and Lou and Jo both jump out of the car to throw up over the side of road. Blaming Chris' driving completely at this point. Also travelling to Switzerland for two separate days of paddling when already feeling slightly ill off flood water isn't ideal.
Austria saw two of Jo's swims and Switzerland the final swim. Naomi had a swim or two in Switzerland and Ela managed to keep dry all holiday. So Team Small had a total of six swims. The EST had no swims and Chris just had an epic or two...
