Spring has finally sprung, the weather is getting warmer and the sun has finally broken through, so it was time to head to Lee Valley.
I had a hour slot on the Olympic course, after arriving a bit early I took some pictures of Neil Owens who was paddling on the legacy course before I had my paddling slot with some club members from Whitewater Action Medway.
As the weather was so nice we decided to make a day of it, by visiting Paradise Wildlife Park near Broxbourne.
Although the rear head restraints / headrest can be dropped down then the lower bed is made up they take up a lot of room under the bed. As we often drop the bed and travel with my kayaks inside I wanted to remove them.
Drop the head rest and carefully prize out the plastic side covers
There are ‘C’ pins holding in the headrest, using a pin punch I knocked them in from each side.
Once the pins have been knocked in the headrest can easily be pulled out.
The black plastic is part of the locking system shown below is to keep the headrest locked up, this moves with the headrest metal bar is removed stoping it from locking up, I pushed this in and placed a small piece of foam on the hole and replaced the side cover.
Finally to finish it off I put some grommets in the holes.
We decide to go to North Wales for Easter week this year with the plan of doing some mountain biking, touristy things and some paddling. With it being an early Easter we took the decision not to spend the whole week in the van and risk not being able to get our kit dry easily so booked a cottage in Ffestiniog to the Saturday then stay in the van over the Easter weekend.
Due to heavy snow forecast in the Midlands we delayed our journey up until the Sunday and I’m really glad we did, as we drove along the A5 between Llangolen and Corwen the snow was up to 3ft deep and the road closed due to fallen trees due to the weight of snow.
Later in the week we visited Llechwedd Slate Caverns at Ffestiniog, these were really cool and I would recommend the deep mine tour to everyone. Just around the corner is Antur Stiniog A dedicated down hill mountain bike centre where you can book an uplift and let gravity take you back down the purpose build tracks.
Finally we headed towards Bala where I paddled on the Tryweryn.