It could have been that. What I can't work out is what that trouble could have been.MiM wrote:Wouldn't the most obvious explanation in a case like this be that one of them got into trouble, then the two others tried to help, from where things started escalating...
They apparently had the usual life jackets and helmets. And the kayaks were the unsinkable ride-on variety, and there were ropes attached, so plenty of hand holds.
Even if they got tipped off, they should have been ok to get back on and paddle to the bank. Or at least one of them, out of the three. The water was higher than usual, but it's a flat stretch, so that shouldn't have had much effect.
The only real hazard that I could find, was the bridge that I pictured, which is only about fifty yards from where they started. If the water was raised, that could kill all three, under the right circumstances.
When you have a weir, like that, you can get a back-flow on the surface. The main flow is directed downwards, and it drags water with it from the surface. So you can get a few metres of powerful UPSTREAM current at the surface, that keep dragging you back to the weir, and you get sucked under again by the main flow. So you go round and round and round and can't get out of it.
Why this doesn't happen in ordinary white water is that the back flow isn't very wide, from rocks.
On a weir, it's the full width of the river.
What puts me off that theory is the report by the dog walker, that he saw them a couple of miles down from that bridge, and they were ok.
If that's true, it wasn't the bridge that did for them.
