Hey there,

Tickets for our WAKEParty next Wednesday are now online on the Union shop!

£16 will give you a whole afternoon of riding as well as a Burger and a Beer! The price also includes transport from and to the Union (Beit) and ALL required Kit.

Buy soon we only have limited seats in the coach and we will sell out quickly!

First come first serve

https://www.imperialcollegeunion.org/shop/club-society-project-products/wakeboarding-products/10849/the-wakeparty-ticket

 

UNDER 18s please contact a member of the committee if you bought a ticket as we need a signed parental consent form from you!

Hey Wake-people!

Preparations for this year’s WAKEParty are almost finished and tickets will go online soon.

Make sure to stay tuned!

The WakeParty has had another successful year! Selling all 49 tickets saw the lake covered in many excited but anxious newcomers keen to try out wakeboarding. After learning on kneeboards and practising on the system 2.0, most were getting up on the main cable by the end of the day. Knackered after a long day of riding, everyone tucked into their burger and drink and enjoyed a nice hot shower. Then it was onto the union and a subsequent house party to celebrate our progress and to get to know each other. What happened after that is hard to remember …

Breakfast at Tiffany’s, cheap wine, Nutella spreading and a short stint of light hearted nakedness is basically the trip summed up (Oh and a bit of wake boarding too).  For what is becoming, it seems, a tradition, WakeImperial headed to France for the fourth year in a row to embark on a summer tour.  The dodgy Cypriot Gaby was the only man behind the wheel for the whole trip so constant stops were needed to fuel him up with 4 packs of RedBull NRJ to get us there in one piece.  Upfront for the first leg of the journey was Will and Edd, however, Will had to sadly leave us half way through the trip due to being a grown up with a full time job (boring)!!  Fortunately Edd was with us for the whole trip as we would have been unable to live with out him – his 20 minute jokes were just too good to miss.  Fast asleep in the back was Anni, who we came to find out had unrivalled stories about a certain brown substance. Then there was myself, Jed,  squished in the back seats!

On the first day we had the short drive down to Paris, when we arrived we found out we had a problem that was going to be with us for the rest of the trip – trying to a park a large minibus in a city, which is not the easiest task to undertake!  After finally finding some suitable parking we headed into Paris for some serious selfie taking, a meal and a “quiet” few drinks.  We ended up in a small bar and then found ourselves being dragged to a club with a woman who was probably a little too old for the clubbing scene, but hey ho she was a local so knew where was best.  After an evening with some awful dancing and a far too many pints we decided to head back to the outskirts but not till Will bought a drink that he did not reap any benefits from!

The next day we embarked on the 10 hours of travelling to get down to our accommodation for the week in the south of France!  The journey was not so bad all it really consisted of was sleeping, naming animals, eating baguettes and cheese… Not such an awful day (Gaby may think differently).  After the long journey we found out we didn’t have a key to get into our accommodation so we ended up having take-away pizza and beers then sitting on the porch for the evening,  finally retiring for a night sleeping in the surprisingly comfy minibus.

Will had a fantastic day trip planned for us to a mouth watering leisure centre in Albi, which consisted of just about every extreme sport you could ask for. From bmx-ing to downhill go carting, we tried it all!  After all this we headed back to the booked accommodation which was so ridiculously close to the lake we would be wakeboarding on, we could jump in it whenever the urge took us, (Anni maybe wasn’t always so pleased to jump in it).   We sessioned the cable on the Monday all day then unfortunately we had to give the grown-up full-time worker a lift to Toulouse Airport so he could fly back to the UK.

After 7 hours of successful riding on the Tuesday we decided it was great idea to head to Toulouse to experience the nightlife!  We ended up being taken to the infamous club “The Colour of the Panties” by some girls we bumped into, who knew their way around Toulouse (and Airbus) extremely well.  After another  evening of poor dancing on the bar we headed back to the minibus for further night of cosy sleeping in the adopted sleeping quarters.

On the Wednesday we survived another long drive to the beautiful south coast of France for a day of sunbathing on the beaches and exchanging disturbing stories of our youth.  While we lay on the beach we ended up thinking it was a fantastic idea to drive the short distance into Spain to see the great sights of Spain and get some tapas… Good idea at the time till we ended up being stuck in traffic for a bit longer than we would have liked!  However, the tapas rewarded us  for being stuck in traffic.

After the adventure to Spain we headed back to another 2 days of solid riding at the TNG cable… no wetsuits needed, just board shorts, perfection!  All smashing our trick aims and then drinking a little too much in the evening during numerous games of ring of fire.

Saturday came upon us a little too quickly which meant we were all back in the van for a another long journey back up through France, with a night stop in the very upper class town of Orleans (easily mistaken for New Orleans when one of us was calling for a taxi).  We arrived back into the UK on Sunday afternoon to surprisingly good weather, however, nothing compared to what we had been lucky enough to benefit from for the whole week in  France!  All in all a fantastic tour with a great bunch of people!  When are we booking for 2015?

WakeImperial Tour

^^^^^^^TOUR VIDEO^^^^^^^^

For the third time in the era of WAKEimperial we descended on France. With 2 pretty French boys in our midst – Antoine and Rodolphe (one infact isn’t so charming but the other, being the chief hair stylist for Mens Health makes up for it by the bucketload – of hair gel that is) and a badass grey van with an equally infamous Jake at the wheel we were prepared to stomach all the baguettes, cheese and pate that could come our way. Also decorating the back of the van was Claire and myself (Will) and the dark horse of the trip (who would join us later) Ben Grabham himself. Grabham not only shocked everyone with his ham and his incredible ability to spin 360s but also with his rather bizzare Guerkin fetish.

Anyway, I digress – the road trip consisted of a gruelling never ending drive to the bottom of France with a re enactment of the 60s including sing alongs to yellow submarine and Mrs Robinson. After sessioning the fabulous cable that is Cergy we had a fantastic barbecue (with some equally amazing sausages) with the Desmets (who also kindly accomodated us for the night before).

We then proceeded to a big leisure center at Albi where above all other things, I conquered  my fear of heights (funny that eh?) much to the approval of Jake who was sandwiched between me and Rodolphe on a zip wire. We did do some wakeboarding but were more enthralled by the other activites on offer inluding a downhill buggy track (that got the better of Jakes iPhone) and a self controlled roller coaster type machine (despite several signs warning my co-pilot Rudolf to slow down on this machine he never once touched the brakes – I can only assume this is because his hair wasn’t quite wind swept enough to make the cover of Esquire and being an Imperial student, he was trying to improvise).

Our next stop was TNG near Toulouse, where we stayed in some lakeside bungalows for the best part of a week. Needless to say, with 7 hours of riding a day and a bungalow that was closer to wakeboard to than walk from the cable our riding and physical ability deteriorated rapidly. Antoine sessioned his back (for lack of a better word), Jakes elbows were giving him stick, I still think I’ve got a fractured rib from a very intimate encounter with a large pipe and Rudolf, well let’s just say his hair was suffering from the effects of gravity. Claire was the only sensible one that found more productive things to do with her time!

Additional highlights include:

• -Offering an all you can drink night for the Toulousian mosquito population whereafter Jake, Rudolf and I had a cosy night on the terrace under the stars only to be woken by a “Russian tart” at the foot of my sleeping bag with a bear on a leash yelling something along the lines of “Shaggy”,
• -Grabham and his ham on said pipe
• -Antoines Pain Au Chocolat joke as we were eating our pain au chocolat.

Unfortunately during our time at TNG we didn’t venture far from the lake and I didn’t follow through with my plan to test out my French on the Toulousian nightlife: “Tu veux un quickie derrière les buissons? L’herbe est confortable.” That will have to be saved until next time!

When it was finally time to pack up our bags many tears were shed and thank you’s given and Mr-Crazy-Man-With-Orange-T-shirt came around to apologise for harassing me on the cable and to buy some of Rudolfs latest hair styling products. Our journey home consisted of dropping off Grabham with a plentiful supply of large guerkins for his lonely night at the hostel and his flight home. Jake was a superb driver and ferried us all the way home whilst his passengers were busy being drunk and loud or fast asleep.

All in all it was a fantastic trip and the weather couldn’t have been any better (until we crossed the channel into the U.K).

C’EST BONNE!

Expect photos soon.