Roadtrip to Larcay | Whitewater Kayaking France

For the people that are familiar with the European freestyle scene, might know that France has a bunch of amazing waves! Some are quiet famous others might not be as much. Last spring, we were in luck, one of the lesser known unicorns was running at prime level! Larcay! This amazing wave hadn’t shown in over 2 years! Due to thunderstorms the level of the Cher were at an exceptional high, time to go!

Larcay is located in the Middle of France, close to a city called Tours. The wave is known for easy access, amazing green shoulders, a big smooth foampile and eddy service! You could call it a dream wave! The foampile is super friendly and smooth so it’s ideal for all paddlers to learn any move they can think off! Sven Joos, Ruben Vantomme & myself, decided to go and check it out!

Saturday evening, I just got back from Germany from a day of teaching and my phone was buzzing with level notifications of Larcay. Awesome! I probably called up and bugged every single person who would be crazy enough to go to Larcay for 2 days that evening. I was in luck and found 2 fanatics! 11:45pm we decided to go, next day at 5am we were on the road to Tours!

A 5-hour drive brought us to Larcay and we couldn’t believe our eyes! An empty wave, perfect levels and sunshine! We couldn’t have asked for more! The next 2 days were filled with awesome soul surfs, big aerial moves, lots of turns, flips and so on! Larcay truly lives up to its name. It’s super smooth, allows for big take offs and the eddy access is amazing!

Our European team leader, Adrian Durrant, lives about 45min away from Larcay and was so kind to offer us a roof over our head for the night at his place! Winning! Massive shoutout to Adrian for the fun night and for letting us crash!

On Monday the water level started dropping and by the end of the day it had come to a minimum level for the wave. Unfortunate, but nonetheless we all left with big smiles on our faces after 2 awesome days of surfing!

Amazing little trip to one of the unicorns of France, we’ll be back when high water returns!
Shoutout to Sven Joos and Ruben Vantomme to clear their schedule and to rally with me on such short notice!

Due to our quick decision making, we might have forgotten to bring a camera… I do apologise for the picture quality.