An 8am start on a Saturday to go white water rafting despite over night flood warnings - were we mad? Maybe a little bit! The Preston team love a challenge so despite the rain we headed for the National Whitewater centre near Bala, Snowdonia National Park, North Wales, hot bacon butties in hand!
 Waiting for Carl and Steve Martin as normal and leaving at 8.15am! Not quite the executive travel we are used to using, no movies played for the 2 hour journey to Snowdonia, so we had to entertain ourselves with trivia questions and Carl's rotten jokes. Saying that we still managed to arrive before Howard who had planned to zoom down the M56 and arrive before us - so much for the Boy Racer!
We all arrived and chose our teams - 2 boats at 11am and 2 at 11.30am. The fun began by trying to kit us all out in wet suits. Who would have ever thought that men were more body conscious than women. All those held in stomachs - "too many beers I think". Thank goodness for those life vests which hide some of those bulges. It came to pass that at least Gillian, Bill and Andy pulled their wetsuits on with the zips at the front, just to prove we were all amateurs.
Still not ready though - now need the hard hats. Fully decked out and with paddle in hand, we hoisted our raft onto the back of a waiting trailer and were taken to the top of the very fast moving stretch of water - River Tryweryn which has hosted 3 kayaking World Championships. It is a steep and rocky mountain river with fast flowing rapids due to the 2 weeks of incessant rain - still, the choppy white water didn't worry us too much, honest! GULP.
First a 15 minute training session on how to all row TOGETHER and rescue those falling overboard. TOGETHER was the operative word, who would have thought that the brain-box developers of the group would not know their left from the right? We were now ready to face the raging torrents.
With adrenalin pumping Carl managed to tip Steve Martin out of the raft on the first trip and thank goodness for the training session, they managed to fish him out of the river and back to safety. 
The only other casualty to the water was the instructor in Gillian's boat. As they flew down one rapid in a bit of a nose dive the back occupant of the raft, Jess, was catapulted out of the boat. She then managed to hold on and bark orders at the 5 spectators in the boat to paddle backwards.
The 11am raft Team, Carl, Steve, Jen, Heather & Clare, managed to get their boat stuck nose down facing upriver on a very large rock - and the Dev team, already up to ramming speed before the other boat hit the rock - managed to run their raft straight over the top of them, in a little disguised attempt at retribution for Steve and Carl's constant jibes.
Their 'Captain' abandoned ship and jumped off the back of the boat - so much for women and children first - he would have had to wait for the raft to empty J - and Stevie Martin was almost, almost squished. Fortunately the Dev team decided to go easy on them and put the boat into reverse, pulling their one ton craft off the top of the other raft - the Dev team then continued happily on their way giggling insanely.
This was apparently the first time the centre have experienced an incident like this!
4 times we all got in and out of the boat and by the end of 2 hours almost every part of our bodies was freezing cold and sore. We all hit the hot showers and were ready for our little brown bag pack lunches. The journey home was quite quiet with the odd snore from the chaps. Lots of aching bodies and tales to be told once we got back to Preston. All in all a fantastic adventure and an experience we will always remember. As a "bonding experience" it was definitely ONE OF THE BEST.
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