In Spain and Portugal I learned to find lines and calm down when things become stressful. In Morocco I learned to let go of the unknown. In Turkey I learned to slow the boat down, and boof. In Corsica I learned about horizon lines. In Piemont, I had a chance to truly let go and enjoy the work we (mainly Michal) have put into my kayaking. My signature move is still a sweep-to-backloop, but I feel like I move further away from that every time we get on the water. And even more important than nice kayaking is to entertain the crowd, so you're all welcome.

We started with the Sesia Alpin sprint section. This was one of the biggest moments for me - following Michal down a section of read-and-run class fourish, without feeling stressed, and (for the most part) hitting the lines I wanted. We reached the bottom section at Mollia, and took a look. I really wasn’t sure about running it - it’s a collection of technical movements, and quite steep. My initial thought was about how likely I was to do the entire thing on my face. I think my experiences in Turkey were a big part of why I decided to run it. It looked steep and scary to me, but also wasn’t boxed between hundred metre cliffs. I ran it, had a nice line, and it’s one of the most beautiful rapids I’ve ever run. The rest of the run was super fun, and I possibly achieved one of my deepest plugs on the final drop, misreading the horizon line and doing a beautiful boof, vertically down. I came up paddling, ready to fight my way out, and saw Michal crying with laughter in the final eddy.

Next up we did the Balmuccia gorge section of Sermenza. I was a little nervous - I understood that while none of the rapids are astronomically big, the holes at the bottom can be astronomically sticky. I would say my boof now has around a 65% success rate, but 35% is still quite a wide margin to play with when a rapid is named something like “boof or die”. However, we went down and it was beautiful - the first rapid is quite chaotic, but after that it’s nothing but clean boofs and high gorge walls. 

On the third day after some heavy rain, we went to Gronda, a park and play run that from the roadside looks steep. It’s a series of drops, the section being about 500m. It was epic, and we ended up doing five runs of the whole thing. I enjoyed the last rapid the most - a tall kicker into a small pool, followed by a very small and VERY sticky hole. I misfired several times into the sides, finally nailing a good line on the last run. It was beautiful to be able to lap the drop and actually practice without being too scared.

On the fourth day, we were starting to run out of water. We went to the top of the Egua, a beautiful creek run a little further up the valley. There’s a sort of slide at the top, which I paid very little attention to. It just seemed quite small compared to other things we’d run, and I was preoccupied with the lead-in to the rapid, which looked shallow and unpleasant. I did the lead in, which was smoother than I thought, and approached the ledge of the slide (which is quite committing, you can’t just turn around and decide not to). The slide was, in fact, a lot higher than I expected, and I did a beautiful plug into the pool, much to everyone’s amusement. 

Finally, we reached the day before the BOSS kayak race. I lapped Sermenza gorge a couple of times to dial in my lines, a little resignedly. The qualification for the final was a mass start on an easier section, and I am terrible at that kind of race. I was really excited to race in the gorge IF I made the final, but I was far more nervous about the mass start - which included all pro racers from the male and female categories.

Race day came around, and I was quite resolved to be at least near the start of the mass start. The horn went, we all turned around, and absolute chaos unfolded. I was building into a good sprint, and almost immediately was completely crushed between about ten other paddlers. Over three kilometres I fought to overtake, and qualified for the final in 6th place in the women’s category. 

The final was to take place in the afternoon. I was able to get one more enjoyable practice lap in with some friends, and finally had a better idea of what was going on in the first rapid. The finals came around, and I started the kilometre sprint. I find it quite hard to pace in a creek boat - it’s heavy compared to a slalom boat, and small movements can feel very physical when they’re not timed properly. I knew I had to pace myself at the start, because there were several longer flat sections between rapids. I was happy with my line on the first rapid, and it was incredibly difficult to stay “slow” in the first flat section, because everyone was on the bank cheering hard. I came into “boof or die”, which is characterised by a left curl, followed by a deeply unpleasant “pot” of boils that is super physical to keep speed through. I pulled the boof, and sprinted as hard as I could, escaping the pot with reasonable speed and cruising into the next rapid. It has a sort of weird hole on the right, and a chute on the left. I didn’t line up exactly how I wanted, coming too central instead of moving from right to left at the top of the rapid, and for a horrible second I thought I was going to spend some time in the stopper. However, somehow, the ReactR flushed through with a nice skip, and I started the second half of the run. The final “drop” is a weird boof to the end of a boulder, which I’d struggled to get nicely in practice. I had saved my energy for precisely this rapid, and was super happy to come out of it with some speed on the boat.
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The final sprint through the flat, boily gorge honestly took years off my life. I wasn’t sure where the finish line was after the bridge, and before turning the corner to see the beam, it felt like a terrible, heavy, pathetic sprint into the void. I pulled through the last part, and to everyone’s surprise - mainly mine - ended up finishing second overall. It was a really beautiful event, with everyone sharing lifts, shuttles and beta. There’s not a whole ton of money in kayaking, but people put on these events anyway because they love them. The whole valley is one of the most kayaker-welcoming places I've ever been, and I want to go again to test myself on some of the more difficult runs.

The drive from Morocco to Turkey probably deserves it’s very own post, but within a surprisingly short space of time, we left Africa, crossed Europe, and landed in the van in Turkey. 

Turkey is hard to summarise. I have never experienced so much, so deeply, in such a short space of time. I walked in ruins of cities that have been totally untouched since they were abandoned hundreds of years ago. I paddled some of the biggest whitewater of my life on the Manavgat. I climbed in cathedrals of stone, with chimneys and spires and galleries of rock. I tunneled through kilometres of caves. I had life changing baklava. 

I really wasn’t expecting this part of the world to have such a big effect on me. Turkey was absolutely in the plan, as it’s not part of the EU or Schengen area, and we knew van life would be relatively easy there. What I wasn’t prepared for was the wealth of experiences I would have. You don’t just get carted around ruins to gawp at them - you can climb through them, touch the door frames, walk where ancient people walked. The city of Terassmos was abandoned over three hundred years ago, and it now lies totally pristine at the top of a mountain. It has an amphitheatre that sits at the top of the city on a small spire, surrounded by a bowl of mountains. It’s one of the most surreal things I’ve ever seen in my life. 

I also started to learn rock climbing. I’ve done quite a lot of bouldering before, alongside training. I’ve never properly rock climbed, and I absolutely have never gone first to clip before. It’s wild, and unbelievable pressure (we are absolutely talking about 5a-c here) and I love it. It’s a mind game in a very similar way to kayaking, but gentler and slower. And it also robs your fingerprints. 
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The paddling in Turkey was a big step for me. I’ve never been in a “box canyon”, in the sense that to escape the river requires either being very committed to going down it, or having over a hundred metres of rope stashed somewhere about your person. I don’t think there are many things that are TRUE must-runs, but I think that Manavgat is pretty close. Being in this kind of environment feels extremely high pressure compared to what I’ve paddled before, because the runs are so committing. It felt like we refined the way we paddled together, and I learnt an unbelievable amount about myself. Since paddling the steep canyons of Alara and Manavgat, rivers that aren't walled in by hundred metre cliffs have felt relaxed in a way I'd never would have thought possible.

It’s a bit weird because the better I get at whitewater kayaking, the more i think a lot of slalom “physics” really do apply. They’ve always been an advantage, but I’ve actively tried to learn from scratch. I know there are some habits that don’t serve me well in a creek boat, but as those start (START) to fall away, the good things I’m aiming for are evolving, and a lot of them look remarkably similar to things I had to work on in slalom. Things like pushing the boat with my knees rather than pulling it up towards me was a principle I never quite got my head around in racing, but looks like it's going to feature in the next chapter of my whitewater.

I think it would be fair to say that my whitewater journey properly started in 2025. I already had a lot of technical skills from slalom, and in New Zealand got a taste of the advantage it would give me on whitewater. After Oscar and I broke up, I went on something of a mission to figure out what I wanted from life. This led me to Italy, Austria and finally Norway. I was looking for a mixture of community and sport - and I found both in whitewater kayaking.

Norway was a baptism of fire. I'd never really done serious whitewater, and all of a sudden I was following a crew far more able and experienced than me. Everyone was so kind and supportive, and the experience was incredible. But it was also a huge blur of intensity, adrenaline, and surviving rather than doing nice lines. I left feeling more certain of what I wanted, and a big part of that is to not just paddle - but paddle well.

Kayaking in Galicia and Portugal has felt like a graduation of sorts. Michal and I paddled together in Scotland and Czechia, and I started to work as part of a crew rather than just being a passenger. His incredible skill at water reading, and patience as my ability shifts, has meant that while we have pushed my comfort zone, in Spain I paddled the widest range of difficulty and styles of river that I've ever experienced.​

Our first river was the most beautiful canyon I have ever seen. Sweeping bedrock and clean walls create the Cavado, nicknamed "aqua park". We cruised through the first section, arriving at the "portage" rapid. After admiring how steep it was and taking a very hard left line, we decided to seal launch to re-enter the river below the rapid. It was a long, beautiful slide into the water, with one small step-down in the middle. I had perfect angle (courtesy of Michal), beautiful speed, and promptly compressed my back on the step-down by reacting in a very slalom way to a drop - to sit very upright, with my bodyweight slightly back. This was a hard learning curve, as the exit from the canyon took several hours and possibly several years off Michal's life. 

Lesson 1: When in doubt, pack forwards.

The next few days were spent with me recovering, and Michal paddling with Mike Krutyanski, an expedition paddler and guide who is basically a walking encyclopaedia of whitewater runs all over the world. They paddled a high water Cabreiro, which sounded wild. The next day, Michal and I paddled the Moura, a beautiful little read and run river that had very little impacts and was super nice for my back. As I was still running on a schedule of one-day-on-off, the boys decided to run high-water Tea Gorge. A French paddler called Tom, who was also part of the Cabreiro crew, said that if he ever sees Michal and Mike at the put in, he won’t get on the water, because it’s going to be a high-water stout. Tea gorge was a record highest flow for the crew, and they had a great day again.

Next, we went to the river Deza. I was stoked to find the river suited me very well, and I was able to read everything from the water. We camped at the take out, and spent the next day lapping the main section. I'm starting to get used to carrying these bigger, heavier boats, and it was epic to start looking for the best lines rather than just coping and relying on someone else's beta.

We spent some time waiting for the right flow on Rio Oitavén - and still got it wrong, with pretty low flow. I’ve never paddled a river with so many horizon lines, and the entire first section of the canyon is must run - which means you can't really walk around rapids. It's very committing, and it took a lot of mental work  - it's a classic run in the area, and still quite steep whitewater for me. I wasn't super stoked about my paddling, because I felt there was so much going on that I wasn’t able to concentrate on any one single thing throughout the entire run. However it was extremely confidence inspiring to be able to make mistakes, and fix them - even though Michal did get a bit upset about how hard I was “moving rocks” in the river (out of sheer panic, paddling straight over a lot of them). I loved the drop combinations, and even the 6.5km shuttle run was epic. 
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We had a weird run on the Deva. It was quite a nice chill class 2/3, but had absolutely shit tons of trees clogging everything. Coming from racing, my perception of "hazard" is profoundly flawed - I am far more scared of a 2m drop than a tree blocking the river from side to side. Only one of those is going to kill you, and I am happy for once not to learn this lesson the hard way.

Lesson 2: Respect trees.

Throughout Spain and Portugal, I had a couple of reality checks. I had to adjust my expectations from just running rapids, to enjoying the extended experience - the exploration and hardship as well as the classically fun stuff. For a couple of rivers I managed to really wind myself up and get in a bad headspace before even getting on the water, which meant I was paddling badly and having to do a lot of mental work. After a sort of crescendo, where I panicked about just the suggestion of a river, Michal asked me to relax. Amazingly, I did. There's more work to do, but remembering to appreciate each step towards a bigger goal is a long way towards paddling fearlessly.

I think one of my favourite rivers ever is the Louvado, a run we did quite close to the end of our Spanish/Portuguese leg.  It's quite continuous class 4, especially with the slightly higher level that we had. Shortly after deciding to relax, I was tested by read-and-running down this beautiful river. I had some epic lines, and some deeply inelegant plugs. Finally, regardless of the lines - I felt relaxed, happy, and more like myself paddling aggressively.

Our last river was the Tamega. Michal ran a bit of an epic shuttle, 7km of ascent and winding tarmac. We were worried for most of the run that it would be trash because it was so flooded - we think around 300-400 cumecs of water. Pretty much everything was totally washed out, until we reached the final rapid of the section which turned out was entirely worth the previous 7.5km of flat slogging. An absolutely monster wave train led into huge boils. It was a truly epic river to finish our time in Spain and Portugal.

On the drive south we stopped in Nazare. Somehow, after three weeks of rain, we arrived at the famous coastal place exactly in time for dry weather, an epic sunset and one of the most impressive wave sets I've ever seen.

All photos courtesy of Michal Kuthan