When to raft the Vjosa - month by month

The Vjosa is not one river but four or five, depending on the month you meet it. Snowmelt off the Pindus makes it a different animal from the low, clear water of August, and the autumn rain brings a third river again. None of them is the wrong one. This is what each stretch of the year actually paddles like, so you can pick yours.

April to June: the big water

Spring is when the river is at its loudest. The snow comes off the mountains, the level rises, and the rapids below the bridge run at their full width. If you want the Class II-III at its liveliest, this is the time. The water is cold - around twelve degrees early in the season - which is why a wetsuit is part of the kit and not an optional extra.

May and June are the months we would choose for ourselves. The water is still big, the days are long and warm, the valley is green to the ridgelines, and everything else - the canyon, the trekking, the fishing - is open too.

• Biggest rapids of the year
• Water 12-15 degrees; wetsuits provided
• Every activity running

July and August: warm, calm, turquoise

By high summer the level has dropped and the Vjosa turns the colour it is famous for. The rapids soften into the kind of white water a six-year-old can paddle through, the swim stops become the point of the trip, and the cliff jump at the deep pool draws a queue. Water temperature is up around eighteen or nineteen degrees.

This is the season for families, first-timers and anyone who wants the river as a place to be in rather than a thing to get down. It is also when the kayaking day is at its best - the calm stretches are clear enough to watch the riverbed slide past underneath you.

In a dry August the water can run low. When that happens we move to the sections that hold their flow, and if the river cannot give you a proper run we say so and offer kayaking or the canyon instead. You never pay for a trip that did not happen.

September and October: the second season

September is peak again for a different reason: the heat has gone out of the afternoons, the water is still warm from the summer, and the trekking is at its best. The first rain brings the level back up and the rafting gets its edge back. October adds colour - the poplars along the bank turn, the mornings are cool, and the off-road tracks to the villages are at their finest.

The river decides the day. We only decide the time we leave.

November to March: the quiet months

We run the Vjosa most of the year when the level allows, and there are winter days on the water for those who want them - cold, empty and beautiful. But the shoulder months are really for the rest of the valley: the villages, the honey, the caves, the thermal pools at Bënja steaming in cold air. If you are here in winter, tell us, and we will build the day around what the weather is doing.

How we decide on the day

Every morning we check the level and the forecast before anyone touches the water. The put-in is chosen that morning to suit the river, which shifts its own bed from one season to the next, so the run is never quite the same twice. If the river or the weather is unsafe we move your trip to another time or day, or refund you in full.

Whatever the month, the half-day rafting runs the same way: gear fitting and a briefing in Përmet, roughly nine kilometres of paddling, swimming stops, photos taken by us and sent the same evening.