The Paddler Issue 57 Winter 2020/21

PADDLER The International magazine for recreational paddlers Issue 57 Winter 2020/21

Interview with…

ezine

RICHARD FOX

By Corran Addison

The beginnings of Flow

By Adam Evans Sideslipping a canoe

By Ray Goodwin The River Tay

By Carmen Kuntz Croatian 1,000 islands

By Elaine Farquharson Feedback on the river4

By Jamie Greenhalgh & Chris Brain Meccano in the shoe

By Chris Evans Downwinding in Finistere HelenTreherot Scandinavian SUP adventures

By Lucinda Norris The forward stroke

By BillVonnegut Watching wildlife

By Rupert Kirkwood

Winter issue of

CANOE FOCUS 2020 virtual award winners Paddling and periods BC membership: five good reasons

+

The Wylie Diary

By SarahThornely (Supjunkie) Ireland’s Upper Nore

By John Campion FreeStyle canoeing and music

By Bruce Kemp

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH BRITISH CANOEING

RICHARD HARPHAM

Foreword

Rich Adventure

Musings from my world of adventure and paddling By way of an introduction, I was delighted when Peter the editor, confirmed we could run this as a regular feature. Since the start, I have been a paddler and adventurer in one form or another most of my life and written for the Paddler magazine. In adventure terms, I have completed over 11,000 miles of human-powered exploits over the past decade with some incredible challenges, friendships and camaraderie and giggles along the way. It does honestly feel like I am just getting started and strangely, the more I have done, the more inadequate it seems. I guess that is the fallacy of us all to feel such doubts and insecurities also known as imposter syndrome; it does keep us honest, humble and grounded.

The last year has of course been the strangest of times; you can’t paddle, you can paddle! And onto the next update. As the safety officer of our local club Viking Kayak Club and owner of a paddlesports business, it has been tricky to update our paddling community. I can say that the simple pleasure of getting time on the water has been a real boost to my state of mind, (or mental health) and equally for our peers and customers as we have navigated the everchanging guidelines.

I can distil it down to magic moments, from beautiful sunsets and brilliant, vivid colours grabbing reflections on the water, to otter kits playing nearby or working on white water technique and being in the zone.

Seeing people learn new skills and feel the paddling love has been a real boost and highlights of a very different year. I have combined it to stay fit with plenty of wild swimming as cross-training for a lack of competitive polo. As paddlers, I figure we are born to this wild swimming pastime and already at the destination in most cases.

More recently, between lockdowns, we took time to explore some new locations and rivers from urban cityscapes to rural wilderness paddling, where we didn’t see another soul. Some of the great destinations we loved were the River Cherwell to thread the backwaters of Oxford’s magnificent spires, the Waveney at Bungay, The Wye from Builth Wells down to Whitney Bridge and the Usk. Winter paddling on those crisp blue sky days is one of life’s great pleasures.

Of course, given the current situation, we planned carefully, avoided third-party contact and developed the art of fine socially distant and sumptuous picnics.

We did manage one swim on the Wye as we rounded a small ledge drop I watched in horror as my novice teammate grab the gunnels for support. Sometime later after a slow-motion dismount we swam down the river swim lines in hand, we chuckled away like two friends in the pub, shooting the breeze and remarking how this was excellent training and we are all between swims! Like the driving test instructor, I did point out I will not ask you to repeat this manoeuvre.

Finally, with the recent floods, I know there will be debris galore, flotsam and jetsam. Taking inspiration from Peak UK’s Pete Astles and the locals on the Derwent last year, we can make a difference removing spoil and rubbish. Almost every day I have collected rubbish whilst out paddling (and walking), and I think we can make a big difference.

#everydaywomble Happy trails and stay safe.

Rich

Richard Harpham, FRGS, is a human powered adventurer, coach and inspirational speaker who has completed over 11,000 miles of expeditions by kayak, canoe, SUP and bike www.richadventure.com Richard runs the award winning Canoe Trail watersports and adventure business with his wife Ashley.Thanks to BAM Clothing, Paramo,Valley Sea Kayaks and SilverBirch Canoes for sharing the dream. www.canoetrail.co.uk

Photo: Ashley Kenlock

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CONTENTS

Richard Fox by Mark Richards Editor

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Peter Tranter peter@thepaddlerezine.com Tel: (01480) 465081 Mob: 07411 005824 www.thepaddlerezine.com

Anne Egan Tel: (01480) 465081 advertising@thepaddlerezine.com

Design 2b Graphic Design Limited

Cover: Jordan Wylie – The Great British Paddle Photo: Alfie Marsh Additional thanks to: Gutsygirls.co.uk, James May, Dale Mears, Andrew Oughton, Angela Ward, Tony Tickle, Antoine Lamielle, Georgina Maxwell, Paul Klonowski, Marc Ornstein, Bob/ Elaine Mravetz, Jim Lewis, Rick Lalonde and Robert Carroll.

Not all contributors are professional writers and photographers, so don’t be put off writing because you have no experience! The Paddler magazine is all about paddler to paddler dialogue: a paddler’s magazine written by paddlers. Next issue is Early spring 2021 with a deadline of submissions on February 10th 2021. Technical Information: Contributions preferably as a Microsoft Word file with 1200-2000 words, emailed to submissions@thepaddler.ezine.com. Images should be hi-resolution and emailed with the Word file or if preferred, a Dropbox folder will be created for you. The Paddler ezine encourages contributions of any nature but reserves the right to edit to the space available. Opinions expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of the publishing parent company, 2b Graphic Design Limited. The publishing of an advertisement in the Paddler ezine does not necessarily mean that the parent company, 2b Graphic Design Limited, endorse the company, item or service advertised. All material in the Paddler magazine is strictly copyright and all rights are reserved.

Reproduction without prior permission from the editor is forbidden.

Issue 57

Winter 2020/21

Thanks to:

006 The Wylie Diary

By Sarah Thornely (Supjunkie)

014 Testing, testing

Panda Board Sport quick release waist belt

016 The beginnings of Flow

By Adam Evans

020 Sideslipping a canoe

By Ray Goodwin

026 The River Tay

By Carmen Kuntz

034 An interview with…

Richard Fox by Corran Addison

046 Croatian 1,000 islands

By Elaine Farquharson

054 Feedback on the river4

By Jamie Greenhalgh & Chris Brain

060 Meccano in the shoe

By Chris Evans

069 Canoe Focus British Canoeing’s 24-page magazine

094 Downwinding in Finistere Helen Treherot

100 Scandinavian SUP adventures

By Lucinda Norris

106 The forward stroke

By Bill Vonnegut

tootega.com

112 Watching wildlife

By Rupert Kirkwood

124 FreeStyle canoeing and music

By Bruce Kemp

128 Music and paddling

Interview with Breakout music star Joylissa

132 Ireland’s Upper Nore

By John Campion

Subscribe to the print issue: 132-page, perfect bound, litho printed. Six issues delivered to your door only £28.49 (UK) Single issue £4.99 (UK) https://thepaddlermag.com/subs-print-paddler/ Special for British Canoeing members £20.99 (UK) Single issue £3.99 (UK) www.britishcanoeing.org.uk/membership/benefits/communications/

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SARAH THORNELY

The

WyliePartDiary III (it’s a wrap!)

Photos: Alfie Marsh www.alfie marsh.com James May and Supjunkie

WHAT, I hear you ask?

No more following the Paddle Logger LIVE tracker to see where Stand Up Paddleboarder Jordan Wylie has reached on his circumnavigation of Great Britain? No more constant checking on the GivePenny website to see how much The Great British Paddle has raised for Frontline Children?

Sadly, The Great British Paddle has come to an abrupt end when Jordan was just shy, by 23km, of John O’Groats after one of the fiercest battles around Cape Wrath which is where our Wylie Diary Part II saw the adventure last.

In 2020, we can only give you one guess as to why this expedition has finished. It’s not to do with the constant severe weather conditions or mental anguish and lack of determination by the man – Covid-19 and more stringent lockdown rules meant that this wonderful and exciting challenge was to finish on the wild unforgiving north coast of Scotland.

For weeks, Jordan had been sitting waiting for a weather window, having paddled wide around Cape Wrath and effectively ‘trapping’ himself and his crew in one of the toughest coastlines in the world being battered by storm after storm. Finally, in the week before Christmas, the team had small weather windows and support from an experienced local kayaker who guided Jordan along the coastline. Baby steps of almost another 60km were achieved with the goal of John O’Groats tantalisingly close, and an army of press lined up and waiting for his arrival.

CORONAVIRUS REGULATIONS AND LAWS On the evening of Tuesday 22nd January 2020, after constant lengthy discussions, telephone calls and emails with the Scottish Government, the decision was made amongst the team that the time had come to stop rather than be in breach of the new coronavirus regulations and laws. It was also the time to lead by example and do the right thing that the team had done throughout the whole expedition, whilst knowing that they had been incredibly fortunate to continue whilst so many others could not experience even simple pleasures.

The team had been aboard the yacht, supplied by The Royal Logistics Corp, felt safe and secure within the rules and had been a ‘bubble’ for many months. They could have fought for their rights for a few more days to reach that iconic landmark in Scotland and set another new Guinness World Record but knew this would not be setting the best example to those very people they were raising funds for. This trip has been about inspiring young people overseas and at home through the gift of education and spirit of adventure and not to be spoilt with the lack of a world record.

So, after the sadness and frustration that the journey had finished, there were the practicalities. The team had just spent almost £1000 on food to last them many months on the ocean, and this was donated to a local food bank charity in Scotland – always thinking of others. The yacht was tidied up and put to bed to await collection at a later date in 2021, and the team said some incredibly emotional goodbyes as they prepared to travel home.

SAFELY HOME TO ANDOVER Can you imagine leaving your team who had supported you through SO much, where you had lived and breathed together in an incredibly small space for months? Max the skipper then drove some 17 hours non-stop overnight to deliver Jordan safely home to Andover arriving at around 0600 – the first thing that Jordan did was grab a beer and take himself to bed to reflect on The Great British Paddle adventure.

There are always silver linings, and the big one now was that Jordan was able to spend Christmas with his daughter Evie who he surprised on Christmas Day – she had no idea he was on his way home! Can you imagine? Over the coming days, there would be reflections and feelings of positivity for the journey and the people that Jordan had met (more of these

This trip has been about inspiring young people overseas and at home through the gift of education and

spirit of adventure

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legends later!) For now, it was simple pleasures like a good roast, a beard and hair trim and normal bathroom facilities!

Fundraising had been slowly ticking along throughout the adventure. This also got a healthy boost with pledges paid, some excellent PR on national TV and radio and bigger donations from schools and other groups. This culminated with Sky Newsreader Kay Burley, a friend of Jordan’s from when she appeared on Celebrity Hunted, appearing on ITV’s The Chase, a Christmas Celebrity Special. Kay knew she wanted to support Jordan’s Charity, Frontline Children and went BIG to help secure a pot of £150,000 if the team of three won.

BEATING THE ‘CHASER’ Like me, I can imagine all the team watched Kay and her fellow contestants beat the ‘Chaser’ and come away with a hefty £50,000 each for their chosen Charities! Suddenly, the pot was richer at just over £80,000, and with further efforts by the team and all their supporters, we also hope to help Jordan reach his goal of £100,000 to finish building that school on the Horn of Africa.

Get on the Water UK who helped provide Jordan with his SIC Maui paddleboard, agreed with SIC that Jordan could auction off the board to help pay for his travel and accommodation when visiting Africa to open the school and finish documenting this incredible story with the help of Alfie Marsh, who would travel with him.

The board was fittingly sold to the ladies at Angel Call Handling who have become like family to Jordan being the main expedition sponsors based in his hometown of Andover. These ladies run a small business with a substantial positive impact and have gone above and beyond sponsoring this cause from day one with advice and financial support even down to providing the team with warmer sleeping bags while struggling with the bitterly cold temperatures around Scotland.

DESERVING A MENTION Other team members deserve mention. We are happy to do that on Jordan’s behalf – Paula Reid, the Adventure Psychologist, has provided Jordan with specific performance psychology to help him cope with surviving, coping and thriving in variable conditions. They have spent many months working on Jordan’s mental fitness. “Any psychological preparation enables the performer to be more resourceful and less stressed in situ and make better decisions when the heat is on”, said Paula. She has ‘measured’ Jordan’s psychological health on a daily and weekly basis.

He has been getting high scores for mental strength, despite coming off medication for anxiety and depression – Jordan has truly appreciated Paula’s help.

He also puts this down to ‘blue therapy’, claiming that he feels ‘there is a magical power that the proximity to water and the coastline brings’. As lovers of all things ‘paddle sports’, I think we could learn a thing or two about this natural therapy but also check out Paula’s work for any future adventures you might have.

Big thanks also go to the Project Manager, Alex Alley, who planned Jordan’s route and kept almost an hourly vigil on the weather forecast – Alex has many years of

ocean experience under his belt and also brought us some wonderful interviews on a Sunday evening with Riding the Storm.

TWO INCREDIBLE FILMMAKERS James May and Alfie Marsh, two incredible filmmakers, put themselves in some fairly interesting positions to grab excellent video footage and photographs throughout the trip – please do go and check them both out on social media and the beautiful videos created for Jordan on his YouTube Channel. It was, in our opinion, a weekly high when the latest episode was released.

AND THANKS TO… On the yacht, there was Tori Wells (first-mate), Mia Mallison (first-mate/social media), Max Rivers (skipper), Daz Cox (skipper) and on land Katie Brooks (PR/website), Freya Barnes (social media), Stu Edmonson (runner) and Ashton Grayson (standby support). This trip could not have happened without these wonderful people who are now, because of the journey they have travelled on with Jordan, part of his extended family. Eton Harris and Chartercross based in the United Arab Emirates are Jordan’s personal sponsors, and he also considers them family.

Please check out my latest interview with Jordan here: https://youtu.be/rX2NWV0awo0

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Jordan is strong on life lessons and quotes, and here are a few of his favourites that could really help us all: REMEMBER YOUR WHY When things get in your way, and you lose track, go back to the ’why’.

Jordan’s WHY is his promise to build a school on the Horn of Africa for 250 children in a refugee camp.

IT’S NOT THE CRITIC THAT COUNTS “I’ve come to learn, and live by, that unless the haters and non-believers are in the arena and getting their butt kicked alongside you, then don’t even give them the privilege of being in your headspace.”

STAY TRUE TO YOUR VALUES “Your values are ultimately your internal compass to help you navigate life. If you compromise them, you will get lost quickly and stop moving forward. Never forget who you are and what you stand for.”

FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS “Every time before my paddle, I re-aligned my focus onto the paddle, the weather, the environment, the risks, the equipment. My focus was always on performing to the best of my ability and giving myself the best chance of progress the moment I stepped onto the board. Keep your head up and look forward, whatever you are doing in life.”

BLUE THERAPY “There is so much to be said for the powerful blue therapy I have experienced, including the physical activity, natural surroundings, wildlife, fresh air, purpose, motivation, hope, sense of progress and achievement, joyful moments, team spirit and support. I hope my journey will show others that with the right PEOPLE, a strong PURPOSE and with lots of PASSION that ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!”

SUPJUNKIE I would personally like to thank Jordan for his neverending spirit of adventure, resilience, positivity and mental strength and for also allowing Supjunkie to be part of ‘the team’. He has always had time for us and has given so much back to all those who have supported him on this wonderful challenge. Please keep doing what you are doing Jordan, and we look forward to hearing what the next adventure will be!

YOU CAN STILL DONATE HERE: https://givepenny.com/the-great-British-paddle-2020?

1st UK’s Test Centre 0207 993 2036 https://sicmaui.co.uk

London’s SIC Maui Glide Centre & Store We teach SUP at the Blue Chip SUP School equipped with top quality SIC inflatable boards

Photo by Jordan Wylie SIC Maui London is a part of Blue Chip SUP Limited run by Piotr Kadziela, and is a SIC Maui retailer

Our quality inflatable and hard boards have been presented with the highest awards

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Testing, Panda Board Sport quick release waist belt www.pandaboardsports.com Dale Mears @StandUpPaddleUK Quick Release waist belts have been something to take the SUP world by storm this year and used in specific disciplines for the advantages of holding the leash up away from your feet and reducing drag in some situations from the water.

However, many issues have been raised this year from organisations, brands and paddlers about the safety in some situations when wearing an ankle leash. To sum it up, an ankle leash is more challenging

to remove in an emergency than reaching your waist due to distance from your hands.

A Quick Release waist belt allows you to use a standard ankle leash usually provided with your board, but instead of attaching to your ankle, it is attached to a loop on the back of the waist belt. In an emergency (trained correctly) the toggle on the belt can be quickly pulled releasing the belt and leash from the paddler.

AFFORDABLE There are many waist belts available and some more advanced than others. However, today I want to show you one of the cheaper and more affordable belts on the market. Panda Board Sports are a UK company passionate about peoples safety; they promote QR waist belts and paddlers joining clubs for lessons and advice.

g

testin All belts feature Panda Board Sports branding and packaged in a card box which is nice to see, reducing plastics used in packaging items.

Easy to cut to length if required, but always insure enough overhang to grab in an emergency.

These are a great addition to your sup set up, but please understand how to release it before using fully.

Priced at £15.99 for the standard, £18.99 for the HiVis version and £15.99 for the Junior these are very affordable belts.

dd lers - email us: review s@thep addle rez ine

m .co

Reflective model, the Hi-Vis version is identical except for the high visibility strip so that it stands out in low light situations, a great safety feature.

nte of i

The junior, 38mm in width, construction is the same.

However, the belt is slightly reduced in overall length to suit the smaller paddler. Recently the junior model comes as standard as a high-vis model with a reflective strip.

e will b nd it ed a iew rev uct od

JUNIOR

res t to pa

The loop on the back is stitched in and doesn’t have a separate release itself like some other belts, so when released, there is no confusion about what to release.The standard length belt is a good size for approx up to 40inch waist.There is also a Junior for the smaller paddler.

ou want yo ion. If y u stat rp st r

Panda's belts come in a couple of different sizes. The standard belt (normal) is a 50mm thick belt featuring a hard-wearing quick-release buckle with a bright yellow easily identifiable pull toggle at the front for emergency release should you need it. The belts are stitched with saltwater resistant bonded 40 industrial nylon, so they will not degrade over time through use in the water.

The Paddle r ez ine te

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ADAM EVANS

The beginnings of

FLOW

Photos: Andrew Oughton,Adam Evans and Angela Ward

I once heard an adventure sports coach describe psychology as being, “All about thinking,” which is about as accurate as saying kayaking and canoeing and stand up paddle boards are all about using sticks in the water. It’s a part of it yes, but in reality they are a very small part.

Adam is a professional mental game performance coach, a British Canoeing Guide Scheme Assessor, Advanced Canoe Leader and Canoe Coach and also is kindly supported by Hou Canoes and Palm Equipment. www.mentalgame.co.uk

Our thinking can sometimes be quite analytical, considered and conscious, but not entirely.

Although it is conscious and so we do know we are ‘thinking’ whether or not it is accurate, we do know we are thinking it, and when we know we’re doing it, and it is conscious so we can analyse it and evaluated it, which is the basis of Cognitive (thinking), Behavioural (doing happening) and Therapy (improving).

However, there is something more important than our conscious awareness, it’s our non-conscious, often referred to as the unconscious.We do so much that’s beyond our own awareness and this has a significant or probably greater impact than the things that happen within our awareness. Our non-conscious faculty is the part that does much of the perceiving of the world automatically, it can be sometimes inaccurate, it’s very subjective, it’s highly impactful on us and it’s automatic.

Understanding that when we’re paddling at our best we are in a state of Flow sometimes called the Zone, when we are in Flow it’s often said we are of ‘no mind’ or without significant cognitive effort, we are doing things automatically, fluidly, non consciously, with a sense of focus with the right balance and ease but also engagement. When we are out of Flow we can often have a sense of agitation and stiffness often through over thinking or disengagement through lack of challenge.

The identifier of the Flow state, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, described it as, “A state of concentration or complete absorption with the activity at hand and the situation. It is a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter.” It’s a state of focus on the task with a sense of natural ease in the activity, and with a balance of engagement challenge and control.

The opposite of flow could be described as anxious or disengaged.

ENGAGING MORE QUICKLY There are many ways, depending on what needs to be warmed but here are a few simple tools that we can use to begin to train ourselves to engage more quickly with Flow, to get the most out of our paddling performance.

To some extent most human beings like predictable patterns and routines, it’s the need to know that a set of steps will likely result in a predictable outcome. Rituals form a part of our lives. The trick is to set up a pre-paddling routine that you can hone and develop with intention as a series of steps to prime your mind and body to be ready to paddle. Most high-performers in any discipline will create these ‘organising the self’ rituals, paying attention to details while focusing on the simple process of preparation.

It can help to devote the time to create a simple set of proper steps that will result in you intrinsically knowing that you have organised things and are ready, this will be a fundamental step in getting into a state of Flow. Be methodical, be intentional and see what happens. Do it the same way each time so it becomes a ritual. If you’re very clever you can use the final step of the ritual as a signal or trigger to mark the end of this routine of preparation and get into flow just like Dr Ivan Pavlov did, with triggers on dogs.

Creating and maintaining Flow can be a conscious decision too, but only after some pro-active training.

Many performers and coaches mistakenly think they need to be hyped up to get the best performance, whereas a sense of focus and calm is often more optimum.

So if Flow state is so great how do we get to it more reliably?

Well as much as we warm up our bodies to get into a physical Flow we need to warm up our minds also.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described Flow to be almost identical to Hypnosis, in that it involved a narrow focus of attention, a loss of selfconsciousness and a sense of creativity and potential. To proactively create and engage with a sense of Flow or even create the first steps into performance through Self Hypnosis, we need to have a deliberate and intentional mindset that balances the sense of control with a sense of naturalness and unease.

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BREATHING

https://mental-game.co.uk

This can be focusing on breathing, but in a relaxed way, we can develop a technique that can not only improve our sporting engagement, but also has a positive impact in other areas of our life. This breathing training is a great way to pre-train ourselves to access Flow, it can be done at home and just prior to our paddling while on the bank.

It’s very simple, get yourself into a comfortable position and breathe in through your nose for a count of four seconds. But fill your belly first, then your diaphragm, then your chest. As you fill your belly, imagine a string pulling your bellybutton outwards, sucking all the air through your nose. Do the same for your diaphragm and then your chest.

When you’ve completed a full inward breath, simply hold it comfortably for another four seconds, then over four seconds let your chest relax as you exhale, then let your diaphragm relax as you exhale and then finally your belly relax as you exhale. Simply wait four seconds when almost empty of air before repeating the process. Do this for about five minutes and focus on the sensation of the air coming through your nose. Pay attention to the quality of your breath through this exercise.

This will have a subtle but significant and cumulative psychological and physical impact on your performance, by creating the first steps of Self Hypnosis and Flow.

We can also reduce anxious feelings and stress by pre-oxygenating and flushing carbon dioxide from a system, we do this naturally, especially babies, with the natural ‘double in breath and long sigh’. As it’s done naturally, it’s done therefore unconsciously so we can do it consciously to instigate a reduction in stress and an increase in relaxation.

It’s very very simple, breathe in through your nose, and then breathe in some more to top up the lungs,

this is called the double breath, then breathe out through your mouth smoothly, much like a long sigh.

Do this at least three times whenever you need to reduce a little performance anxiety. According to neuroscientist Professor Andrew Huberman, this opens up the lungs alveoli to help with oxygen uptake and flushes out carbon dioxide.

Both of these techniques involve using the diaphragm more in the breath, and via the vagus nerve this activates our parasympathetic nervous system, helping maintain a better sense of calm and focus, which is vital for performance and Flow.

As we have taken our first step towards Flow and Self Hypnosis, it can be really useful to say something to ourselves to help our performance. When we do this it is known as a Post Hypnotic suggestion. We might want to say things such as, “I am calm” or “I am ready” or “I am focused.” These are really useful and positive, although one little point is they are fixed statements, which means they could: A be argued with, for example, “Am I really calm?”and B they are fixed, which means they don’t allow for any change or improvement.

In certain circumstances it may be useful to add a sense of development or process into this Post Hypnotic affirmations and suggestion, for example, “I am becoming more calm.” Or, “I am focused more and more.” Though don’t underestimate the power of saying something with utter conviction to yourself in an authoritative and commanding way such as, “I am ready!”

How we say things to ourselves is just as important as what we say to ourselves. I’ll cover a little more on this in further articles.

What’s really important to recognise with all of this is the Locus of Control is within us as performers.

Meanwhile have a little fun playing with the simple techniques and notice any interesting effects they have.

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R AY

G O O D W I N ’ S

SIDESLIPPING A

C A N O E

Words and photos: Ray Goodwin Moving the boat sideways while moving forwards is an essential skill that can get you out of difficult situations.As an example, it is often easier to miss an obstacle by moving the boat a short distance sideways using its momentum, rather than trying to turn and ending up broached on the rock you were trying to avoid.

So in all the following descriptions, the canoe is moving straight and forward before applying the stroke.

If you can do draws strokes and cross draws then you are well on the way. To perform a hanging draw, the canoe needs forward speed. In the photo (Side slips 1) the blade is in the draw position with the indicator thumb pointing to the stern. Chest and knees are rotated to the paddling side. The blade is then put in parallel to the direction of travel and level with your hip. The power face of the blade is towards the canoe, and the indicator thumb is pointed backwards. The blade should be slicing through the water.

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The indicator thumb is on the hand that is at the top of the paddle and allows us a quick check that we are

set up correctly Sideslip 2 After a split second, you gently rotate the leading edge (photo sideslip 2) of the blade away from the canoe.

This allows water to hit the blade's inside face, (photo sideslip 3) providing a strong pulling action – the canoe sideslips to the paddle side. Putting the blade into slice allows you to gently open the blade to a pressure you can manage. Putting it in with an angle already on it jars you and easily turns the canoe.

There is rarely a perfect spot for the paddle, and the best of us will make minute adjustments as we move.

The canoe often starts to turn rather than move sideways. If the canoe turns to the paddle side, close the blade's angle so that it is slicing parallel to the boat and then move the paddle back and reopen. If it turns away from the paddle side, move the blade forwards.

A real key is not to give up if the canoe starts to turn but to keep with it and move the blade.

Sideslip 4

Sideslip 3

Sideslip 5 The hanging draw can be done cross deck (cross-deck hanging draw). As the paddle swings across, slide your knees to face the off-side (photo sideslips 4 and 5).

The power face of the blade is towards the canoe, and the indicator thumb points forward. The blade should be put in parallel to the centreline and then gradually opened until pressure is felt. The blade goes into the water level to where it would be in the hanging draw on the opposite side; so if your hanging draw is working, choose the same spot on the offside: you can use a rivet, your body, or a piece of tape as a marker.

The running pry is a dynamic method of sideslipping your canoe away from your paddle side (photo sideslips 6). If you have mastered the hanging draw, this does the same move but without swapping sides.

Instead of the leading edge of the blade being angled away from the canoe, it is angled towards it. The shaft is on the side of the canoe, so there is no pressure on you. The boat has forward momentum. The blade is slashed in from behind and the side. As the blade is angled then the moment the paddle connects with the hull, it will kick the canoe sideways away from the paddle side.

Sideslip 6

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SIDESLIPPING A TANDEM CANOE I use this as an emergency avoidance stroke on a white water river. Slam the running pry in as far forwards as possible, kicking the bow away from the paddling side and an obstacle. Then allow the paddle to slide back along the gunwale to push the rest of the canoe away from the rock/log.

When sideslipping a tandem canoe, the idea is to go from travelling forwards in a straight line to travelling

Sideslip 7 Sideslip 8

forwards and sideways. It is satisfying and slick when done well. Several different strokes are combined, the action of the bow paddler being matched by the stern. It is an awesome exercise in teamwork.

The canoe has forward speed (photo sideslip 7), and the bow paddler does a hanging draw. As the bow begins to move sideways, a stern rudder is used to cause the stern to follow suit. The bow leads the move. If the bow points away from the move, it will cause the sideslip to stall.

Sideslip 9

Sideslip 10

Sideslip 11

Photo sideslip 8 shows a bow jam paired with a hanging draw.

Photo sideslip 9 A cross-deck hanging draw at the bow is matched with a stern hanging draw at the back. Note the amount of chest rotation used to get strong positions for the arms.

It is sometimes difficult to know how well these manoeuvres are going, so try parallel parking at a jetty or use buoys to gauge your success.

But make no mistake, these are not strokes just for flatwater play or manoeuvring but useful in white water as well (photos sideslips 10 and 11).

Thanks to: Thanks to Venture Canoes, NRS and Freebird Paddles Ray’s website: www.RayGoodwin.com YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/ RayGoodwinCanoe This is all based on the video so you get to see it in action: https://youtu.be/-0qrBjbKegw ThePADDLER 25

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Canoeing and childish wonder on Scotland’s…

RIVERTAY Words and photos: Carmen Kuntz Tiptoeing over mud puddles and dancing between trickling streams, we’re fighting to keep our feet dry while portaging gear down to the River Tay. The mid-September showers have subsided, for the moment, and we use the break to load paddles, drybags, throwbags and a small dog, named Gigha, into whitewater canoes. But this is Scotland, so the impending drizzles, mist and fog only add to the ambience of a day paddling on the longest river in this water-rich country.

When my foot slips into the river, submerging fully as I push the canoe away from the shore, I can finally surrender to the rain and stop fighting the losing battle to stay dry. The moment socks become saturated, and soles are soiled, is when a paddling trip—be it a day outing or a month-long adventure—really begins. It’s the moment when your adult worries wash away, and you can enjoy the simplicity, excitement and exploration of paddling a canoe on a new river. It’s when you start to feel like a kid again.

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Wet socks and wet smiles are an appropriate way to start a rainy week of paddling and adventure in Scotland. Even with the constant drizzle, the weather was too warm for drysuits, and yet, too chilly for sandals making it perfect neoprene-sock-and-river-shoe paddling conditions. We put on the River Lyon under an old railway bridge, just 300 metres before it joins the River Tay, about 10 kilometres west of the town of Aberfeldy. Popping up hoods, we set off for an afternoon of moving water and mild rapids, a paradise for those wanting to hone basic whitewater canoe skills, read water and practice general river navigation.

Or in our case, for kayakers testing the waters of single-bladed propulsion.

With a backdrop of highland hills, we catch eddies, pushing the limits of balance and teamwork, creating exciting challenges for each other around every corner. The River Tay (Tatha in Scottish Gaelic) starts in the west of the country, flowing from Loch Tay in Killin, east across the Highlands before joining the Firth’s salty tidal waters of Tay on the North Sea, south of the city of Dundee.

UNIQUE The Tay is unique in both its length, 188 km (120 miles), and the number of major tributaries that feed into it, including the Earn, Lyon, Isla, Tummel and Almond rivers, flowing water which irrigates countless scotch distilleries along the way. As we float through the dark water, we watch herons, sparrows and ducks hunting and our minds drift to lunch. And like a gang of kids, when hunger strikes, we obey!

We pull boats onto the shore and toss dry bags from boats before we tackle the tarp, a small area of reprieve from the drizzle. I wander off to explore a tributary lined with dripping willow trees and darting birds, returning to a spread of lunch like that from a fairy tale – hot tea, sandwiches and cookies. We shake our hands dry and dig in; food always tastes better outside. The rolling fields across the river add to the mystical mood, and we spot rabbits and sheep grazing side by side.

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ETIVE RIVER Our week in Scotland promises some faster and more gradient-driven excitement, too. We will try the rapids and drops of the iconic Etive River as it winds through the green hills, fed by seemingly endless torrents, tributaries and trickles. Perhaps a little park and huck at Falls of Falloch and some exploration by sea kayak around Castle Stalker, or an afternoon of stand up paddling through the reeds around the ruins of Castle Kilchurn. Like children, we will play as we go, stopping along the road for whatever opportunities present itself – like some spontaneous tidal surfing and fresh fish and chips in the seaside town of Oban.

Warmed, hydrated and refuelled, energy levels spike, and we follow each other into side channels for impromptu exploration. The massive beech and maple trees overhead create a tunnel of green. We take advantage of the slow pace to keep an eye out for any of the critters that call the Tay home, like otters, salmon, lampreys, kingfishers and even the recently reintroduced Eurasian beaver. Slow-motion exploration gives way to chatter and jokes, and we drift under old stone bridges listening to our Scottish friends tell us snippets of history and local lore.

Our take out hides amongst the foliage, and we each catch a micro eddy before wrangling our canoes up the right river bank, just a few hundred metres outside

https://goo.gl/maps/pv2zENW9SBbBDGB46 Aberfeldy proper. Although we have only seen a small segment of the remarkable River Tay, our child-like curiosity has us wondering what a multiday trip through the country would show us. Maybe the Great Glen Canoe Trail, a 60-kilometre trip transecting the country from Fort William to Inverness, will be our next trip to Scotland!

After shedding our wet gear (piled in bins in the van like good kids), we transition back into adults – and head straight to the pub for pie, pints and, of course, a nip of scotch made with water from the River Tay!

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An interview with…

RICHARD FOX Interview: Corran Addison Photos: Mark Richards,TonyTickle, Corran Addison, PeterTranter and Antoine Lamielle I grew up, in South Africa, being inspired from afar by several paddlers. One of these was none other than the legendary Richard Fox, who by 1985 when I moved to Europe was already a three-time world champion in kayak slalom. Richard would go on to become the most successful slalom kayaker in history with 13-world championship titles (including the ‘preworlds’) to his name.

I dabbled in slalom as a junior, making the provincial team in South Africa as a junior, but it was never a focus for me. By the mid-1980s, slalom boats were already pretty far removed in design and purpose from my everyday paddler (a Perception Dancer).

In 1988 I got to spend a week in Japan with Richard. On a trip to Japan, I was Perception’s new designer to pitch a new idea to Mont-bel (the Perception importer), and Richard was there to teach some slalom training camps for Mont-bel. I had my latest new playboat design with me (it never saw production) and spent most of my time in that. But Richard encouraged me to jump into his slalom boat and do some of the workout routines with the Japanese team paddlers, and at the end of the camp, we had an 'impromptu' race.

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Olympics in 1992, and this time the penny dropped.

On returning to Perception, I ordered a new Reflex2 and began to train in earnest.

Over the next few years, as I raced my way to Barcelona, I would alternate between paddling slalom – one sport – and kayaking, which I perceived as a completely different sport altogether. Despite making it to the Olympics, as a back-marker, slalom did make me the kayaker I eventually became. Over those four years, the skills I learned took me from being an OK paddler to one of the top ones of my generation in freestyle and extreme paddling.

I am not alone in this. Eric Jackson and Scott Shippley are other examples of a slalom paddlers who excelled in other disciplines. More recently, Nouria Newman is an example of what slalom can do for kayaking skills.

But slalom and modern kayaking remained at best distant cousins, and I’m afraid that they have drifted so far apart that they are not on speaking terms with time. Even with the 2005 rule change that saw slalom kayaks drop from 400cm to 350cm, it was almost too little too late. Everyday kayaks were by then under the 200cm mark, with a ‘long’ boat being 250cm.

So why this rambling introduction? Context. I caught up with Richard after nearly two decades, and we chatted about the state of slalom, the recent inclusion of ‘extreme slalom’ into the ICF fold, his daughters Noémie and Jessica’s successes, and where we saw kayaking, and perhaps more precisely, slalom, going in the future.

Here is the interview I did with him after our chat.

Hi Richard. The last time I saw you was the 1995 USA freestyle team trials where you taught slalom clinics and were roped into judging the freestyle event. Back then, you were married to Myriam, but not a father yet, and were winding down your competitive career. Briefly, what have you been up to since then?

Richard of course, won it by a country mile, but I came in second, and afterwards, he pulled me aside and told me I was wasting my talents and should race.

One thing that did come about from this week was Perception agreed to build his latest slalom boat, the Reflex, in plastic. After the 1988 pre-worlds on the Savage, he left his slalom boat with us to make a mould from as a starting point, and once Richard did that, I appropriated the boat and began to 'do gates'.

It was more of a skills improvement thing for me than anything else. The slalom boat was now radically different from anything I usually paddled (working on the Corsica, and paddling a 275cm prototype playboat as my daily paddler).

In 1989 Richard won the world championships again, a race I witnessed in person as I was there to do ‘freestyle demos’ for Perception between classes. You know – mucking about on waves while athletes do real work. Again Richard berated me about racing, pointing out that slalom was now slated for the

Actually, I was a father by then. Jess was born in 1995 and Noémie followed in 1997. After the Atlanta Olympics, I joined the ICF Slalom Committee, and the first thing that happened was that slalom was booted off the Sydney 2000 schedule. Not a good start!

I got involved in the campaign for reinstatement which took us through to August 1997. In January 1998, I started work as the Slalom Head Coach in Australia.

Initially, we went to Australia for just a couple of years, which have now turned into 23 and counting.

Penrith at the foot of the Blue Mountains in Western Sydney has become our home. The Whitewater Stadium, our office and playground. I was the Coach for slalom and then the Performance Director for both Olympic disciplines from 2005 through Beijing London and Rio. After a stint working with the French team, I returned to Australia at the end of 2019 and haven’t been anywhere since!

I’m working with Paddle Australia on a revitalization project for the Whitewater Stadium. Think upgrades, a second channel we call an ‘easy river’ and solar and battery power for the pumps. Watch this space.

K1 men’s team – Bala 1981

Myrium Fox

Your daughter Jessica has become a multiple world champion in both K1 and C1. Did she naturally gravitate to slalom, with both her parents being world champions, or did it take some prodding?

You’ll have to ask her that! Both Jess and Noémie grew up on the river bank, so to speak, and paddling was never far away, and it was a natural thing for us to do on holidays when they were young. When they were ready, they got into it learning to roll and making the jump onto whitewater.

As you stepped down from the limelight, and Jessica stepped into your shadow, there must have been some challenges, before she stepped out of it and became a success story in her own right.

Things happened quickly once Jess got selected to the Australian Olympic Team for London. She was 18 and already had a couple of world championships under her belt. The media loved the story that her Dad was fourth in Barcelona, her mum third in Atlanta and then she went one better winning silver in London.

We hear a lot about Jessica, but tell me about Noémie.

Noémie followed in the paddle strokes and is carving her graceful turns on the river and elsewhere in life. She has been a regular Aus team member in K1 and C1 from junior to senior, winning a team gold last year in C1 with Jess and Ros Lawrence. She’s now studying for a Masters in Management at Sydney University and currently on location on an internship in Switzerland, she might hit you up for a snowboard before you know it!

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Tony Tickle and Richard Fox

Jessica winning the Women’s C1 title at the 2015 ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships at the Lee Valley White Water Centre

Freestyle when we last saw each other was in its infancy, while slalom was an old and established discipline that at a glance had minimal similarity as a sport to what kayaking had become. Paddlers competing in that freestyle event were using the same boat to compete as they would the next day to run a river. Slalom is not like this, but it was not always this way.Tell me about the roots of slalom. How did slalom originally come about?

Well, there is a lot of storytelling floating about at the moment on social media that is good to follow.Things got going in Europe just before World War II, and some pioneering days were for sure. It was a boat handling skill test first and foremost, folding boats and no lifejackets or helmets.

Fibreglass made a huge difference, and things became more organized through the fifties and sixties. Boat designs and the rules evolved, and there were some massive leaps and bounds.The Munich Olympics at Augsburg in 1972 is definitely worth a look. Imagine racing on that tight and surging artificial course in a four-metre boat which you couldn’t dip under poles.

Researching old images of Richard Fox

By the early 1980s there seemed to be a significant divergence of 'kayaking' from 'slalom'. Kayak lengths were dropping. Perception released the Dancer in 1982 that was 350cm, and Pyranha shortly afterwards the Mountain Bat that was 330cm. By 1994 whitewater kayaker was under 250cm. Do you think that slalom boats being locked into the 400cm length affected how kayakers at large perceived slalom, and what effect did it have on slalom participation?

I think the '80s were a boom time for participation in the UK and other countries. In the UK the sport was organized into multiple divisions, and there were many competitions across the country on any given weekend from early spring until late autumn. The sport became more specialized, and the lower volume boats were less suited to river running. The 4m length was a throwback to the old days when the boats couldn’t pass under the poles. The longer courses with winning times around 210 seconds matched this. The shorter artificial courses that followed eventually led to pressure to change. Looking back, some people lost their best years paddling to those rules and longboats!

Clearly, the announcement that slalom was back in the Olympics in 1992 injected new blood into slalom. I’m an example of that. But I get the impression it was a momentary surge in rekindled interest that quickly waned.What are your thoughts on this?

Barcelona 92 was a turning point for slalom; there is no doubt. The Olympic status brings investment, professionalism, specialization. Not everyone can make it.

Two world champions tie the knot – Myrriam and Richard.

Greatness in paddlesports seems to run in the family

There can be no question that with the nature of artificial courses as the go-to venue for slalom, combined with the 350cm length, it went through a significant technical revival. Slalom today is far more exciting to watch, it’s explosive, and barely resembles the discipline that you and I did.As a national coach and father of Jessica and Noémie Fox who have taken the slalom world by storm, you’ve been on the cutting edge of this change.Tell me about it.

I would say there has been a progressive consensus among teams to create an attractive spectacle, particularly the Czechs. Even though not everyone agrees on every aspect of the sport, the athletes have evolved the sport tremendously in the last 5-10 years through their technique and on-the-edge racing. We’ve seen the introduction of C1 women and switching, even by some men who have sold their souls according to some purists! Upstream gates have been revolutionized, and vintage paddlers have learned new techniques to avoid the ‘old school’ label.

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ThePADDLER 40 Within three years of the rule change to 350cm, all slalom kayaks were exactly 350cm long. Do you think they would be shorter if they were allowed to be, and what would be the advantage to slalom (rather than ‘big picture’ of slalom within kayaking overall) if boats were allowed to develop naturally?

That’s a good point. There has been a trend down to the 350cm limit with the technical evolution and trend towards tight courses. I am sure some athletes would go shorter in a flash because they are tired of wearing down their ends on concrete walls. How much shorter, I don’t know. It depends on the course designs. Speed versus manoeuvrability has always been part of the equation. When I sit in my boat (Vajda Salto) or see it in profile on a car, I sometimes wonder what all that length is for. Does it help?

When I see younger paddlers in a 350cm boat, it certainly looks too long.

Although slalom has gone through a fantastic and exciting revolution over the last decade or so, it’s still far removed from everyday paddling. Slalom boats barely resemble the kayaks used by everyday paddlers. Participation in slalom is also dropping. Do you think that the discrepancy in the equipment from standard kayaking equipment and slalom equipment plays a role in this drop?

I think there are many reasons for shifts in participation and I wouldn’t attribute it to the type of boat necessarily. Today, COVID will be a significant barrier moving forward, and some will never come back to competitive paddling of any sort. Some of the forces at play are economical, and others are the forces of specialization and professionalism. The gap between haves and have-nots. Like access to highlevel coaching, good training water on a daily basis.

An ability to travel almost permanently for training and competition. The best get better and become out of reach. The sport has to reinvent itself at the lower levels in many cases, but it can’t be left alone to figure it out without resources. The top end has to be part of the solution, too. So, the boat specification is a fundamental question for consideration.

You mentioned to me that Jessica has about eight boats scattered all over the world at any one time. Not everyone has this luxury, so rather than focusing on things like boat lengths, wouldn’t efforts to level the playing field in other ways be more beneficial? Perhaps a boat limit where one boat has to be used for every event all year? Or the ‘have’ countries need to donate a certain percentage of their allocated money to developing nations? These are just ideas, but what are your thoughts on how we can help underrepresented countries and athletes come to the fore?

Haha, it actually might be more than eight, but who is counting! Living in Australia is a challenge, and she does do both C1 and K1 events. I agree; it is a luxury

afforded to only a few in any sport. The level playing field or ‘monotype’ design often comes up as a question linked to paddle sports development. At the same time, technological advances help accelerate learning, accessibility and performance.

Imagine if we had done that back in the day and we were still stuck with a four-metre boat!

There are limiting factors to development beyond equipment which also needs to be addressed.

Growing the global paddlesports economy through industry and commercial partnerships is essential so that the offering towards development can be greater.

Identifying and developing athletes, coaches, and local structures, accessing facilities and equipment, and travelling, training, and competing require significant investment and support wherever you are.

One model I like is the partnerships some federations have with smaller nations supporting access for identified athletes to training centres, where the infrastructure is in place, with additional support for outreach projects back in the home countries. It is not easy to put in place because of competing priorities, but it is essential for the global community’s health and wellbeing.

Finally, I would say the Extreme event’s introduction brings additional opportunity for worldwide development in whitewater disciplines as a whole.

Ironically, in the last five years, whitewater kayaks have been creeping back up again in length. I have two kayaks that are 300cm long in my lineup, and there are a dozen 275cm long ones out there that vaguely resemble a short puffy slalom kayak.We refer to them as ‘half slice’ boats as the tails are thin enough to pivot, but the bows are high volume for running challenging whitewater. Slalom skills translate directly to paddling these kayaks, and we see a lot of old slalom paddlers using them nowadays as they can relate to how these boats are paddled.

However, we’re still not seeing a migration of ‘half slice’ paddlers moving across to slalom.Why do you think this is?

Well, one answer is it’s quite simple, rules are rules. If your boat is not 350cm or more, you can’t race.

You’ve got to have the gear. Then there’s the weight

difference, which is sometimes double. Also, plastic doesn’t handle or perform like composite, so you need to adjust and get used to the nervous twitch of a vacuumed carbon epoxy F1. Finally, to do well in slalom like anything these days you’ve got to put the time in for specific practice. I’m not sure many of the 'half slice' crowd want that. However, I see those boats on the water, and the trick would be to switch across early and go hand in hand.

The ICF has recently included ‘extreme slalom’ into its fold.While the moniker ‘extreme’ is silly, as these races will take part on class 3, (they are generally known as boater-cross) it seems to me that clearly, the ICF is trying to do something to remain relevant to whitewater kayaking as a whole.

My take on the name is that it is an extreme version of slalom rather than slalom on extreme whitewater. I think it was branded to catch attention inside the Olympic channels and media and the public. It might have stuck for better or worse, and I don’t think it’s a big deal, for a viewer who might easily relate to that descriptor. There are more important things to figure out! There are many anomalies in sport, like calling a 1000m kayak or canoe event a sprint!

That’s a good point on the name.Why do you think that the ICF has shown a specific interest in boater cross/extreme slalom rather than freestyle, which was also on the table?

I can’t speak for the ICF or IOC except to say I think several influences are at play, including the perceived broadcast appeal of a close contact head to head format racing on whitewater and the unpredictability of a mass start event like in BMX or snowsports. I guess we are far too implicated ourselves to be objective about what is appealing or not to the Olympic audience. I think all forms of paddling competition have great visual appeal when presented right, and it is tough to make choices between disciplines or events. I haven’t been close to the decision making process at all, but now that it’s done. I think we have to make the most of the opportunity and create the best event possible.

Men’s team, Bourg

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The ICF has so far decided that the boats used are mass-produced creek shapes.

However, the athletes will most likely be slalom paddlers who by choice or obligation participate in these ‘Chinese downhill’ full contact events.What challenges do you think will be faced by slalom paddlers as they attempt to adapt back and forth to these big round boats from their slalom boats?

Noémie Fox competing in the 2019 Slalom Worlds Photo: Antoine Lamielle

You’ve said it all. I think the boat specs should be reviewed, for sure! To enable that there needs to be a market force at play and people willing to invest in design, production and distribution, so the ‘massproduced’ criteria are met.

To this point, players that have been providing gear for slalom for decades have been summarily excluded from participating in ‘extreme slalom’ because the boats have to be 'mass-produced'. It’s unclear what this means currently. Do you agree with this decision, and if not, how would you have gone about making the event ‘relatable’ to the masses of whitewater paddlers, while being inclusive of all kinds of equipment suppliers?

I guess it is the way forward that counts most rather than the rules or choices so far which, after all, got the event across the line and into the Games. Now, it is crucial to have a growth mindset. Firstly, to consult and optimize a short term format and model through to Paris to create certainty while maximizing the opportunity and appeal, matched with a longer lens looking towards global development and synergy within the sport.

It seems like there is potential to bring together the slalom worlds and whitewater kayaking words with these boater cross events, to be held on the same venues, at the same time, and hopefully at some point, with a mixture of top slalom and top extreme paddlers going head to head: a mixing of worlds and ideas.What is your opinion on how we (ICF, various national governing bodies, and the kayak industry as a whole) should be focused to maximize the potential long term results of this new event?

It’s an excellent opportunity to synergize. The first step is to have a quick open dialogue. Many players in the industry have been associated with slalom over decades and can offer an industry perspective that has been lacking or ignored. Many athletes have succeeded in freestyle or extreme paddling from a slalom background; they too have an informed perspective of different worlds. And, of course, the current crop of slalom paddlers are mixed in their views. Some have embraced Extreme, others yet to try!

With Paris getting the 2024 Olympics, slalom is once more included. But there is no guarantee that slalom will make the cut in the Los Angeles 2028. Given that the largest

kayaking segment in the world is in the USA, this would be a travesty. How can we utilize this new meshing of boater cross and slalom to inspire young paddlers all around the world to get into slalom and keep it relevant to kayaking overall so that Los Angeles is motivated to keep it in the games?

A stronger connection must be made between whitewater paddling as an activity and slalom as an expression of this in the Olympic arena. Extreme will help this if the messaging is designed and managed well.

In 1989 Perception made your winning kayak, the Reflex in plastic, and some years later, a newer one called the Fox.While these were under the regulation length (400cm at the time) it seems they played a large part in getting people to at least experiment with slalom. It was a kayak that could be raced on Saturday (if event organizers were willing to waive the 400cm rule) and be taken river running on Sunday.

Since most kayaks were in the 330cm range then, a plastic slalom of 375 was at least 'somewhat relevant'.

This would have been tough to do ten years ago as the disparity between slalom and river running kayaks was vast (250cm compared to 350cm). Still, in recent years as I mentioned before, some modern kayaks have been inching their way back up in length, and in shape, just slightly towards slalom. Do you think a new 'Fox' design that capitalizes on the rapprochement of slalom and 'half slice' would be possible,

and that it could present the opportunity to get whitewater paddlers to try slalom at a club level (providing of course that clubs wave the 350cm rule as they used to do for the Reflex and Fox)?

It’s funny you should mention that. Over the Southern summer just before COVID, I hatched a plan to develop a new Fox (the Firefox). It is definitely time.

And let’s see what it looks like and paddles like before we worry about rules!

In the late 80s I remember doing timed runs at Bourg St Maurice from top to bottom. First, in my slalom kayak and then in a plastic Reflex, and years later, I did the same in the Fox. I got pretty tired, but I was surprised how close I came to my time in a boat twice the weight! What I didn’t do then was test a composite version.

If you were emperor Fox, and could command the paddling world to do as you wished with absolute power, what would you do; for paddling in general, and/or slalom?

What would be your vision for the sport, and how would go about achieving that (beyond what we’ve already discussed)?

Richard: Firstly, I don’t think we should have an emperor, more a collective of wise minds that reach beyond the boundaries of an individual or national interests. Diversity is an undervalued quality in life, and our sport is rich in its diversity and opportunity. I think the Planet Canoe brand is under-sold. We need to strengthen the presence and promotion of all

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paddling activity for health, wellbeing, recreation, tourism, and elite competition. The partnerships for this journey, whether commercial or institutional, do not visibly exist and yet they are essential for our future. We are paddlers first, Olympians second and then hopefully we finish our days close to the water!

Federations that rely on Olympic funding have become very channelled in their focus. We can understand the political agendas here. But there is a disconnect inside and outside the structures. I would like to see some of the key connections reestablished in critical yet straightforward ways.

Promoting the connection of our Olympic sport with natural environments is an important way to strengthen paddling. Open water paddling in the ocean or inland waters is healthy and accessible anywhere in the world. It should be reflected more strongly in programs presented by federations. The same can be said for whitewater; there is more of it around than we imagine. We just need to reframe and be more diverse in our thinking.

Here is an example: what if we had raced through the city in front of the iconic buildings in London, each stroke touching a part of that history, or if in Paris we could have thought to do the same. How would that look to you?

Getting back to you, what’s next for Richard? Where do you go from here? Your contribution to kayaking as an athlete and standing behind athletes and the organizations they’re a part of is second to none.Where do you go now? I can’t see you sliding into obscurity.

Richard: Well, I’ve been pretty busy this past year working with Paddle Australia and other stakeholders to promote Penrith Whitewater Stadium's redevelopment.

The venue is getting pretty tired 20 years after the Sydney Olympics and needs new investment. I’d like to see that project through and connect the sport and its activities more closely to the community.

Meanwhile, despite a controversial process, we have landed in Paris with new events and an exciting opportunity to connect our past to our future.

Perhaps I’ll have a paddle in that direction too.

I can just imagine Richard Fox entering the extreme slalom in a final effort at Olympic gold.

It’s been great catching up with you, and as always your vision and views are so global in perspective, so forward-thinking while remaining grounded in reality, that it’s thought-provoking and enlightening.

Thanks for your time.

Richard: Merci à toi

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1,000 ISLANDS SUP boarding in Croatia Words: Elaine Farquharson Photos: Gutsygirls.co.uk The Adriatic Sea contains an archipelago of 1,300 islands the majority of which lie along the Croatian coast, making this area a paddlers paradise for exploration and adventure.

This is the bluest and clearest of the seven seas in the Mediterranean. It connects up to the larger Ionian at the southern Straits of Otranto and has Italy to its west flank and Greece just to its south.

These great nations, with their ancient history and mythology, have greatly influenced Croatian seafaring culture. However, it has its own identity and has remained unspoilt and less touristy than its wealthier neighbours.

The tidal range here is slight only maxing to 50cm height difference. The oceans do not govern the swells and surf but more from the wind. Surf is limited in Croatia compared to its neighbour in Italy, but the west shores can gain some great waves on southerly winds.

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The climate here is oceanic and a gentler heat than other Mediterranean countries like Greece. It’s also less humid than other subtropical countries in a similar latitude. The average temperature in summer is around 30 degrees C with a water temperature of 24 degrees C. This makes things very pleasant and enjoyable for race training and touring.You actually want to fall off and its a fabulous place to learn all your freestyle tricks and footwork.

The water here behaves more like a vast open water lake. Paddling significantly benefits from the katabatic and anabatic air flows when the temperatures create pressure gradients between land and sea. It’s similar to Greece and other parts of the Mediterranean with its afternoon winds creating some great downwind runs. The bumps are clear and clean without interference from different hydrology or tidal flows, so it’s an ideal place to perfect and develop your open water playing without too much exposure.

HEALTHY RESPECT Talking about winds they’re generally very forgiving throughout the summer season, and mostly the sea is in a state of calm. However, this wouldn’t be the case during the winter with the notorious Bora (NE) and Jugo (SE) winds that create vast storms. All the island villagers show a healthy respect for such feats of mother nature. I was fortunate to let’s say to experience an out of season storm whilst I stayed out on the islands.

During the storm, the visibility is destroyed from heavy rainfall. Just seconds out in it soaks you to the skin like someone has poured a bucket of water over your head. The forked lightning is spectacular and outshines any bonfire night display I have ever watched. It’s great fun to see from the land to a tourist like me, not to be trifled without on the water that’s for sure. It is a sense of anxiety for the locals as the alarms sound, and everyone battens down the hatches.

Luckily it passes quickly and is incredibly rare unless you go in winter.

The physical geography is beautiful with inlets and archipelagos of islands to paddle around,

rock hop and explore

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ADVENTUROUS WOMEN

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A fabulous opportunity to meet amazing and inspiring ladies and share an adventure with

like-minded people

MULTI-DAY ADVENTURING The physical geography is beautiful with inlets and archipelagos of islands to paddle around, rock hop and explore. The opportunities for exploration and multi-day adventuring are endless. I think you could spend a lifetime here and still not have explored all the wonderful inlet, rock formations and grottos.

Due to the shorelines being rocky rather than sandy, the water is so clear and the visibility excellent.

Snorkelling off the board is a must, and below the board waterline, there are hundreds of shoals of fish and spectacles to see. My favourite was the octopus or the cute black sea urchins that if you’re careful will slowly slither over your hand in the sheltered rocky shorelines.

Other animals to enjoy but be aware of as they will defend themselves if you challenge them are adder snakes in the vegetation, although rare best to be aware if you’re camping along the shorelines or into the more shrub-like areas. Also in the water, they have jellyfish that have a slightly worse sting to our common jelly’s, but I didn’t see any when I was there not even the large barrel jelly’s. Also weaver fish, anemones and those little black urchins can sting you if you happen to stand on one of them. To be honest, we had no problems just a little note to be aware of that’s all.

I was fortunate to join the fabulous gutsy girls under the ownership of visionary Natalie Poppy as an assistant guide on their holidays for adventurous women. The set up is truly unique as guests are housed in locals accommodation and traditional catering bespoke to the group. Dining at a small locals restaurant just for our party felt like a luxury where I was a guest in their house, it was lovely.

FOOD IS HEAVENLY There were no expenses spared on the beautiful foods and wines and extracurricular activities outside of the paddling. Food is heavenly.

Restaurants use the traditional Peka, a large metal dome dish covered in the embers and hot coals from an open fireplace to slow cook meats or seafood. The smokey flavours combined with freshly caught octopus or local meats are to die for. Plus their wines and hospitality give you a fabulous way to unwind after the adventures of a day of paddles.

I stayed on the island of Molat which is just west of Zardari. It is easy to get flights from the UK and catch a ferry from Zardar out to the islands. Ferries to Molat go twice a day. Its rural population of fewer than 200 people are split between three villages Molat, Zapuntel and Brgulje. The island is tranquil and unspoilt, and in Molat there is a cute harbourside, village centre and square next to an ancient church. The vegetation is filled with beautiful sprays of red and pink flowers with olive groves or pines. It all gives the air such sweet smells, which seem to attract beautiful hummingbird size moths

t: +44 1629 732611 | e: info@peakuk.com peakuk

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to their nectar. It’s worth taking time to relax in this fabulous atmosphere to chill, and if you’re lucky, a little lizard may scurry by whilst you’re quiet.

The days consisted of exploring the islands with the help of equipment and guides from Malik adventures.

Marco, the owner, has sourced a fabulous selection of high-end boards and paddles, enabling everyone to gain the best for the physical and technical levels of ability and make progressions during the weeks tours.

The company also hire kayaks and bikes to enable you to get the most experience out of the islands. Our itinerary consisted of biking and paddling, with time to explore the inner islands with a hike up to a secluded church, which reveals views across the whole of the Dalmatian islands. Spectacular to see what you’ve paddled and where you have come from.

AMAZING AND INSPIRING LADIES The group of people I met was diverse in age groups, backgrounds and life experiences – what a fabulous opportunity to meet amazing and inspiring ladies and share an adventure with like-minded people. From a coaching point of view, the team had so many cross over skills, fitness and experiences; it was easy to coach such an enthusiastic bunch of ladies. This enabled us to cover a lot of mileage and take the group into more challenging conditions and will allow us to enjoy leisure time and play.

Croatia is a fabulous place to come and paddle in gentler waters, escape and enjoy warmth and tranquillity with lovely people and traditional cultures.

The problem is once you go once it leaves you wanting to come back for more.

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Finding feedback on the

RIVER

4

The Coach

Jamie Greenhalgh & Chris Brain A paddler can develop faster and more effectively if they can tune in to the feedback they are offered from various sources.

Some of this feedback can come from traditional sources such as a professional coach or someone else observing your paddling. However, some of the feedback may be found internally, from the personal reflections we can make about our paddling, allowing us to coach ourselves effectively. Of course, we can also gain feedback from the environment we paddle in and understand how to respond to the messages it gives us frequently during our time on the water.

In our previous chapters, we have looked at using feedback gained from the river, other paddlers, and ourselves to develop our skills (https://paddlerezine.com/finding-feedback-on-the-river/ and https://paddlerezine.com/finding-feedback-on-the-river-pt2/ and https://paddlerezine.com/finding-feedback-on-the-river-3/). In this final part, we will focus on using the input from a formal coach to aid your paddling progression.

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The Coach

One of the most useful things a professional coach can do is help you with the fundamental skills of finding feedback from the river and finding feedback from your efforts and learning process. Good professional coaching can also help you become a self-reliant paddler and an autonomous learner. For this reason, even if you want a coach to give you all the answers and tell you exactly how and where to take each stroke, sometimes the most helpful thing they can do for you is not to.

BE SPECIFIC; THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU CAN DO TO PREPARE FOR THE COACHED SESSION If you are going to engage with a formal coach, you initially need to think about what you can do to get the most from the session(s). There are plenty of things that you can think about which will help you maximise your time on the water and to get the most value from your time. You may well be approaching this session with information gained from the previously discussed areas such as peers, the river and your observations. Coming to this coaching session with knowledge that you have already gained during your paddling and sharing this with your coach, will help get straight into it rather than start from scratch.

It is crucial to be specific with your aims and reasons for engaging with a coach. Often paddlers can approach a coach for help, saying, “I want to get better” or “I want to feel more confident.” Whilst these are legitimate motivations for a coaching session, they are very subjective. It can be very hard to know if you are effectively making progress with them during or after the coaching session. Consider if you have a more specific target for the session, eg. “I would like to be more effective at breaking in and out on faster flows, as I often spin out on the eddyline – I think this will help with my confidence.”

Whilst this may feel like a big jump from simply 'getting better' it helps the session become much more focused, and it will be much more tangible when you start to make progress with your goal.

It is worth considering what your expectations are for the results from your coached session. Whilst there may well be progress made during a coached session, typically, the most progress is made afterwards when you can practice what you have identified in this session. be prepared to be challenged during the session and for things to be difficult and to experience failure. You may leave physically and mentally exhausted, as your coach will be keen to push your understanding of the concepts by helping you solve problems with questions and experimentation.

If you only want to experience success throughout a coaching session and be given specific challenges, consider the value of this and the limited impact on your development.

Be prepared to be challenged during the coached session and for difficult things and experience failure

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ThePADDLER 58 CONSIDER WHAT YOU CAN DO DURING THE COACHING SESSION TO GET THE MOST OUT OF IT To get the most out of a coaching session, you need to take responsibility for your learning!

Information, questions and challenges should flow both ways between the student and the coach during a session; it will not be helpful to say, “Yes coach” throughout the session!

CHRIS BRAIN Chris has been paddling and coaching for over 20 years and runs his own business Chris Brain Coaching, delivering coaching, safety and rescue courses and REC First Aid training.

Chris would like to thank Pyranha kayaks, Palm Equipment, Red Paddle Co and Go Kayaking Northwest for making fantastic kit and their continued support. www.chrisbrain coaching.com

Ensure you ask questions and clarify your understanding of what is going on and the point of the tasks. Doing this helps to deepen the learning and make the skills more transferable to other locations you may practice after the session. While a coach may deliberately give you small chunks of information, so they don't overload you, it is essential to understand what is happening. You should know what direction the session is heading in at all times.

Do be prepared to think for yourself and not to follow the advice of the coach blindly. You may well be asked questions about how you think something should be done or the ways that a task may be completed. Whilst it might seem counterintuitive at first that the coach would ask you what you think the answer might be rather than telling you, this approach helps paddlers much more in the long run.

THINK LONG TERM – GENERATE A PLAN You can use the feedback given during a formal coaching session to help you plan your development for the long term. Everyone will approach their long term development differently on the water, but if you have engaged with a formal coach, we will assume that you are open to a more structured approach to your action plan. Whilst your long term plan doesn't necessarily need to be formalised on paper or said out loud, it can be beneficial to identify specific benchmarks that you want to aim for on your way to your long term goal. These benchmarks could be l Paddling in a specific area/country. l Paddling a specific river. l Paddling a certain number of rapids at a specific grade. l Catching a certain eddy. l Rolling on both sides. l Paddling your first waterfall.

It would help if you had some feedback from your engagement with a coach, which will help you structure this plan. You should use this information to create a clear progression that you can use to move forwards with your paddling skills. By being focused on this plan and having tangible milestones, it will make tracking your progression much more manageable, and you will easily be able to see how far you have come.

JAMIE GREENHALGH Jamie is a passionate river guide, kayaking coach and people person. He runs two kayaking businesses: Paddle365, for cutting edge white water skills coaching, and Dee River Kayaking, dedicated to giving the best possible introductions for regular people into the sport.

Jamie is lucky enough to be supported by Pyranha Kayaks and NRS Equipment, both of whom make brilliant gear to keep him and his customers looking and feeling cool. www.paddle365.co.uk www.deeriverkayaking.com

Special thanks to Georgina Maxwell for additional photos

Whilst it can be advantageous to regularly work with a coach, be cautious of starting to use them as a crutch where you only paddle at your best or challenge yourself fully whilst you are there. The best long term goal will always include a vital element of independence so that you are not entirely reliant on your coach and ensure you can continue to make progress when they are not there. Remember gaining help from an expert is useful, but ultimately, you have to do the hard work!

From all of us here at the Paddler magazine, thank you Chris and Jamie for such a great resource for paddlers and all the best for 2021.

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T H E

MECCANO I N

T H E

S H O E

Words and photos: Chris Evans, Lead Paddlesport instructor, at Plas y Brenin Confidence is like a domestic cat; sometimes it’s there, comfortable and purring away.

Sometimes it just needs a little love and affection, and sometimes it’s disappeared for days on end.

Pete Catterall 2015 With confidence, you’ve won before you’ve started.

(Google search, unknown origin) Confidence is a preference for the habitual voyeur of what is known as PARK LIFE! Blur 1994 I love statements like these because they can stick with you and become something to aspire to or live and breathe, having said that the practicalities of using ‘one hand washes the other, I FEAR NOTHING! (Fear and loathing in Las Vegas) are fairly limited (I say fairly because there is a strong element of positive self-talk in there).

One of the main themes or golden threads I end up working towards with people is confidence; I know articles have been written previously. However, some (not all) pieces feel a heavy bias that leads from the author/coach, e.g. ‘confidence is all about…’ Or ‘the best way to encourage confidence is…’ Instead, I intend to talk through some of the tools you can use to boost confidence in your ability, place within a social group (a bunch of mates going paddling) or the building of self-belief within your ability to do the task in hand (could be paddling a rapid, leading a group or coaching a group yourself). By exploring these ideas and methods, you can decide what works for you towards your chosen goals and ignore anything confusing or an unnecessary process to go through.

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WHY DO YOU GO PADDLING? There is a notion that resilience and confidence can go hand in hand. This resilience isn’t ‘bounces well’ this is the idea that someone is invested enough to be better capable of accepting the rough with the smooth. This often gets described as an addiction to the activity, becoming a way of life they live and breathe it. Hopefully, you’re not visualising the longhaired, bearded, shoeless kayaking hippy that’s spent their entire life in the Himalayas (all said out of pure, green-eyed, jealousy). Instead, see the sort of paddler that turns up first, is the last to leave and can dismiss the knocks when things don’t work. To achieve this, ask yourself this question, why do it?

Why go paddling? What does it mean to you? Any answers to this are personal. There’s nothing wrong with going paddling for the social or being the person that will go paddling on their own because they need their fix. Ask the above questions to accept and understand. Once you’ve found out your drive, do plenty of what you enjoy to build upon on your motivations if you haven't already. There’s the big key, the thread that has the potential to make someone tirelessly practice, motivation.

WHAT DOES THE CONFIDENT PERFORMANCE LOOK LIKE TO YOU? I’m asking this question to you as the individual. It is not what someone else thinks or what you think I, or any other coach, might want as a reply. When this question first gets asked you might not be aware of the answers yet and that’s fine, exploring what the confident performance looks like to you is incredibly powerful, it’s yours, you own it and can build upon it.

The answers could be based upon an idea or feeling, e.g. I’m happiest when things feel effortless, smooth, linked, controlled or comfortable or along the lines of small changes. Another example: I’m now in the best equipment and boat for the task in hand or more significant changes like I need to be lighter and stronger to achieve the goals I want.

Coach’s tip here, don’t discard or put down any information you get back if you ask the above question. Sometimes the reply is “it’s the paddler, not the boat” or “varied practice is key” (the ‘varied’ in this example being the variety of boats being paddled) or even “that’s the boat I paddle, and it works for me”. I compare this to when my brother walked a couple of miles with a piece of Meccano in his shoe; there was no end of ‘these shoes hurt, it’s not right, I’m not comfortable. As he was eleven at the time, it was met with ‘get on with it’ (he was known for being vocal about his dislike of hillwalking)! Imagine the horror on my dad’s face when the shoe came off, and the damage done by the Meccano was visible.You may not see the damage your comments make (we all do this; I’ve done it in the past) but imagine if the ‘wrong feeling boat’ is that persons mental Meccano in the shoe…

THE FEEL OF THE FLOW The feel of flow again is different from person to person. To simplify this, it’s when things become effortless, easy or executed as reflexes or reactions rather than due to a thought process (completed consciously). Again, this is a personal thing, it can range from a simple ‘felt good’ to ‘silky codpiece’ or ‘rhythmical’ (all answers I’ve had as replies to ‘how should it feel’) as well as the above key phrases like linked, controlled, effortless or smooth. To achieve this, find an environment you're happy in, could be a pool with a simple jet or flow to execute moves within your capabilities (entry and exit of flow, for example). Does it feel like any of those lovely key descriptive phrases already described? If the answers yes then the feel of flow is there and you’re potentially ready to move on. If the answers no, examples of this are things like it feels wobbly, clunky or arduous, continue with the task until it feels comfortable, controlled, relaxed and so on (put your own key descriptive words in here).

There’s a couple of downsides to this to be aware of, the first being sometimes it just might not feel ‘silky', or you might feel like finding this ‘flow’ is holding everyone up. Be aware that this could become your focus, e.g.

‘I’ve been doing this for a while, and I’m not making progress or ‘no matter how hard I try; my edges don’t seem to work for me’.The last two regularly mentioned themes (and felt by everyone, even the bravest and best) can be a negative thought process that gets remembered. Instead, base your decisions on that ‘feel of flow’. If you’ve got that fantastic glide feel happening where you feel almost weightless (there you go, there’s mine), it’s arguably the day to push things. If it doesn’t feel like things are flowing it could be the day to have a chilled run (more portages perhaps), or it could be the day to get off the water and drive shuttle/do something else. Please don’t dwell on this instead be proud that it takes self-awareness and situational confidence to say it’s not for me.

Coach’s top tip…

If you’re going to use this concept of ‘the feel of flow’ (all stolen from the inner gamebooks, the inner game of skiing being the closest to paddling), allow the learners time to ‘feel the flow happening’.

The biggest example of this is the coach stating when it’s time to move on, instead encourage ownership.You’re going to tell me when you’re ready to move on/look at the next thing.

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MIND AND BODY It’s no secret that these two are linked. How far you go with this one depends on your motivations and your goals. If it’s the social that you’re interested in and paddling is the vessel that allows this to happen then poor food and a social drink or two are part of the experience, and that’s to be enjoyed. Accept that this may not see you at your best and again, that’s ok. An increase in strength, flexibility and or losing weight has known positive effects on self-esteem and can work wonders for the mind games.

There are probably people reading this who’ve known me for a while that are possibly now choking at this comment and seeing it as hypocritical. I’ve been partial to the odd ‘dirty burger’ and sweet treats and have

shied away from any exercise that could be construed as training. Following a confidence stealing swim earlier this year and subsequently feeling sluggish and unfit, I changed a few things and am now lighter and stronger. Feeling lighter on my feet and happier in my skin translated to confidence in my kayak in a way that I wasn’t expecting. The boat feels lighter through moves, feels like it skips through stoppers and there’s a heightened energetic feel through being fitter.

This training step isn’t for everyone but if you are that strongly dedicated then considering classes like yoga or palates or doing more, running, walking, gym work or cycling all contribute toward the belief that ‘the mind won’t write checks the body can’t handle’.

Mine was stronger and lighter, for someone else it might be becoming more flexible, for example. These significant changes require determination out of the boat but can work wonders for the mind game. Sounds obvious this, if you are coaching someone and it’s a physical thing that’s become the confidence hurdle, get the realisation to come from them if you can. No one likes being told their inflexible, weak or overweight. You’d be amazed by the things I’ve heard from coaches in the past including you have an overactive knife and fork, once again, this could easily be the mental Meccano in the shoe for someone.

POSITIVE SELF-TALK This is one that is now well known and has been a coaching tool for a while, maybe you’ve used it or been subjected to it. There’s a reason this appears this far down in this writeup. I believe that positive self-talk is very powerful and is heavily linked to the belief in one’s abilities. Without substance, this theme could arguably become hollow. “I’m awesome” self-high five! Not judging here, maybe that’s all you need. I need a bit more background for positive selftalk to work. If you’re the same why not base your monologue on some of the above points, this rapid will work because my boat is the best boat for me, I’m as strong, flexible and light as I’ve ever been and I feel like I’m gliding all over the river today (I know I can rather than I think I can). Not only have you been positive here, but you’ve reassured yourself with fact and feel. So long as you’re truthful with yourself.

Coach’s top tip…

Please don’t force this. If this is forced, it can become an arduous task as part of the day.

Instead of ‘stop the negative’ try things like two things you liked and one you’d change, make sure you remember the things they enjoyed as these could become the agreed positive self-talk threads.

THE PRIMAL SCREAM So far everything’s been positive and if everything were favourable would confidence waiver in the first place (that feels like the sort of question that becomes a time syphon amongst a room full of coaches)? Negativity happens and frequently happens as adults seem to have a heightened fear of failure compared to adolescents, hence why nerves are experienced at job interviews, for example. As beings, we all have an irrational side; this irrational behaviour can present itself in aggression, frustration, sadness or anger. Calling it irrational can be dismissive; this doesn’t mean these feelings go away or should be put down, in the wild, it’s kept us alive.

We’re programmed to remember the irrational, e.g. I had a nasty experience in a stopper once therefore all stoppers are dangerous, and I’ll avoid them. Although this sounds well thought out and good idea (self-preservation) the rationale

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here is how do I identify the friendly and not so friendly and how can I utilise the power and shape of stoppers to move my boat around.

Instead of ignoring these thoughts, let them talk!

Please give them a voice! Let the irrational scream, shout, bang its fist, rattle its cage and sulk. Soon enough, it’ll be all out of wind and ready to be reasoned with using positive self-talk, again, based around fact and feel. This way, the reasonable and rational human has put the primal, irrational ‘caveman’ back in his cage. When this isn’t possible, the inner child is having too much fun, causing chaos, and this is another tell-tale that today isn’t the day to go big.

Suppose you’ve got this far and I realise this is longwinded compared to the short and sweet bulletpointed articles out there. In that case, there’s

Coach’s top tip…

If you’re going to use this, understand that you’re likely to ‘open some flood gates’, do exactly as described above and ask to be ‘let in’ to what’s going on and be ready to listen and understand.

This doesn’t mean chipping in when you believe there’s something relevant. Just listen and try to understand what going on, only then can you talk to the rational human.You may even hear personal and home life elements, don’t shy away from this or change the subject and hear people out.The reason you potentially hear all these personal things is you’ve created a trusting, confidence-inspiring coaching environment.

hopefully some useful tools that you can implement to help boost comfort and confidence or at least understand where your confidence comes from. The big point to understand here is that not all these things need to be done to feel at the top of your game; it could be one or two of this article’s elements.

If this is the case, then forget the rest as they may hinder rather than help.

If you’re a coach and these points jump out at you, you’ve found them interesting and want to explore them further be aware that when they work, they can be very powerful indeed. When they don’t work you run the risk of the wheels falling off quite spectacularly.

As a hint here emphasises that both parties, coach and learner, are exploring these to find the golden thread that works, it’s a shared journey and shared outcomes.

Get a learner feeling as though you the coach has invested in them as interested in their progress and building trust in the coaching relationship. Sounds awful this but it’s that trust that will let you as the coach get away with finding out which of the above elements don’t work for your learners.

PART TWO Next article will look at training the brain to focus on the confidence-inspiring themes to reflect upon and remember, and give a few tools to achieve the correct headspace before and after going paddling. Before a coaching session, this could be before putting-in on that standout river or embarking on that once in a lifetime trip.

THANKS Can I just say a huge thanks to PeakUK who sponsor the Plas Y Brenin centre.

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CANOE

FOCUS Our 2020 Virtual Award Winners Page 20

Paddling and Periods Page 13

Five reasons why a British Canoeing membership is fantastic value!

Page 18

Winter 2021

Proud to support

It’s hard to turn your back on the great outdoors. That feeling you get when you’re out there, the one you’ve been missing? We’re here to help you find it again.

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in-store and online for British Canoeing members Full T&Cs apply. Please see online for details. Offer expires 31.12.21.

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Contents

3

#SHEPADDLES

WELCOME Welcome note from CEO David Joy

4

Paddling and periods

14

NEWS Catch up on the latest news from British Canoeing

5 FEATURE

Joining forces to tackle highly invasive floating pennywort

6

15

MEMBERSHIP

FEATURE FEATURE New Year, New Challenges

Into the Maelstrom: Scottish sea kayakers Norwegian adventure 40 years on

8

WELCOME

ACCESS & ENVIRONMENT

Five reasons why a British Canoeing 16 membership is fantastic value!

Unlock and start saving with British Canoeing Rewards!

17

CANOE FOUNDATION Funding launched to protect and improve the paddling environment

COACHING & LEADERSHIP 12

A first-hand look at British Canoeing’s Advanced Sea Kayaking Leadership Award

CLUBS & CENTRES “Clubbing Together” with Russ Smith

#SHEPADDLES

13

20

VIRTUAL AWARDS Our 2020 Virtual Award winners

22

Canoe Focus Winter 2021

New Leadership Awards Pathways

18

4

Welcome The first welcome message of 2021 provides an opportunity for both reflection and anticipation as we look back on 2020 and forward to 2021.

Last year was like no other and our first thoughts go to all of our members who have lost loved ones to Covid-19. We know that many within the paddling community have also been badly affected by the impact of the pandemic, including those who earn a living as coaches, instructors, providers and within centres. We look forward to 2021 being a much more positive year for you all.

WELCOME

There were some other big disappointments, including having to cancel the international events that we were due to host in 2020 as well as all of our domestic championships and none of our GB teams competed internationally during the year.

Whilst our sports activity was restricted, recreational paddlers took to the water in their thousands during the summer months and we attracted 30,000 new members between May and October. Record retention rates saw our membership grow to 62,000 during the year. Our insight shows that 45 per cent of new members joined as families, around 40 per cent were females and the majority identified themselves as recreational paddlers with a growing interest in stand up paddle boarding.

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Due to increased membership income and reduced annual costs, we anticipate reporting a significant year end surplus. I am pleased to invite you to join us (virtually) at our AGM on 13 March 2021, where we will review the year in more detail.

We have already started to invest this new income. The pace we were able to develop and release new high quality digital services for members, was one of the highlights of the year.

Our Go Paddling website and digital resources have gone from strength to strength, with over

400,000 paddlers using the site in 2020. We launched Paddles Up Training during the year, which is a fantastic new digital resource for learners and providers interested in coaching, leading and instruction. We also launched The Clubhouse, a new digital platform for clubs.

We are excited to be developing a new relationship with the Canoe Foundation and I’m looking forward to its relaunch in spring 2021.

A new funding stream of £100,000 focussed on local access projects was released on 5 November.

We are already looking forward to a slightly ‘more normal’ 2021. We will be working hard to continue to engage with paddlers of all interests and from all communities, to understand and meet their needs, to improve the diversity of participants and to attract even more paddlers into our membership community.

We will also be ready for the spotlight that will inevitably come on to paddling around the time of the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games next summer.

We will also finalise our next four year plan for the British Canoeing Strategy this year and there will be many opportunities for you to have your say. My colleagues and I look forward to hearing your views.

It is already shaping up to be a busy and exciting year. On behalf of the Board and all of the staff we wish you all the very best for 2021.

Happy paddling.

David Joy

Chief Executive British Canoeing

N E WS

Receive regular updates plus exclusive discounts for our partner products with a British Canoeing membership.

www.britishcanoeing.org.uk/membership/join-us-online-here www.britishcanoeing.org.uk/news

AGM

https://www.britishcanoeing.org.uk/ news/2020/british-canoeing-agm-to-govirtual-in-2021

Robin Powell presented with Outstanding Contribution Award British Canoeing is delighted to have presented Robin Powell with the Outstanding Contribution Award for his major contributions to Worcester Canoe Club. This award is reserved for the recognition of outstanding service, commitment and contribution to the paddling community over a number of years, at club, local, regional or national level within England.

Canoe Sprint athlete Noah Dembele and Athlete Rep Chair Emilia McAllister Jepps presented a case study on the work they have done within the World Class Programme, to begin breaking down barriers in conversations around diversity at PLx, the annual UK Sport Conference. The duo presented ‘Our World Too,’ a critical thinking game designed by 100 young people in Hackney to enable open and honest discussions around racism and inequality. Find out more here. https://www.britishcanoeing.org. uk/news/2020/british-canoeistspresent-groundbreaking-game-atplx

British Canoeing signs record teamwear partnership with hummel British Canoeing has signed a new long-term kit deal with hummel, who will become the Official Teamwear Partner to the sport. The new partnership will see hummel’s world class technical and sportswear garments supplied to the British Canoeing international teams, including leisurewear, base layers and on water technical clothing for paracanoe and canoe sprint. https://www.britishcanoeing.org.uk/ news/2020/british-canoeing-signsrecord-teamwear-partnership-withhummel

Award season for British Canoeing 2020 saw British Canoeing shortlisted for a number of prestigious awards.

Craig Morris picked up the Special Impact on High Performance in a Sport at UK Sport’s PLx Award.

Craig was then shortlisted for the High Performance Coach of the Year at the UK Coaching Awards 2020 alongside Trevor Hunter, for Talent Development Coach of the Year and the Self-Analysis Tool and Digital Library for a Transforming Coaching Award.

British Canoeing was also shortlisted for four awards at the Association Awards, picking up the top prize in the Best eLearning/Online Education category for the Self Analysis Tool with recognition also given for three other awards: The Executive Board of the International Olympic Committee • Individual Member Association of the Year (IOC) has approved the event programme for the Paris 2024 www.britishcanoeingawarding.

– British Canoeing Olympic Games. The new programme will see the removal of the • Effectiveorg.uk/resource/britishVoice of the Year - Go Paddling K1 200 for both men and women from Canoe Sprint , and the canoeing-coaching-podcast/ this Summer campaign inclusion of a newly instated discipline of extreme slalom.

• Best Digital Transformation – Go Paddling https://www.britishcanoeing.org.uk/news/2020/changes-towebsite canoeing-paris-2024-olympic-programme-approved-by-ioc

Changes to Canoeing Paris 2024 Olympic programme approved by IOC

Canoe Focus Spring 2020 Canoe FocusEarly Winter 2021

https://www.britishcanoeing.org.uk/ news/2020/robin-powell-presented-withoutstanding-contribution-award

PLx

NEWS

British Canoeing will hold its 41st Annual General Meeting on Saturday 13 March 2021 at 10am. This year, with the ongoing Covid pandemic, it will be held virtually for the first time to enable members to attend safely. With the substantial growth in membership last year, we very much hope that as many members as possible can join us. To find out more click here:

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6

Joining forces

to tackle highly invasive floating pennywort choking the UK’s waterways British Canoeing is joining forces with environmental groups and government agencies to help halt the spread of a highly invasive non-native plant which is choking rivers and lakes across Great Britain.

Tiny fragments of floating pennywort can grow an incredible 20cm a day, rapidly forming dense rafts on the surface of the water which then block out light and kill wildlife.

These dense rafts can also make waterways inaccessible to paddlers, anglers, and other water users and present significant flood risks by creating plant dams that back up around weirs and clog up sluices and drains.

Floating pennywort is notoriously difficult to control because very small fragments of the plant can regrow meaning that efforts to eradicate it need to be regular and focussed.

ACCESS & ENVIRONMENT

A new way of working

The future

British Canoeing, along with Maidstone Canoe Club, has already worked in partnership with the Medway Valley Countryside Partnership and the Environment Agency (EA), plus local contractors to remove floating pennywort in their local waterways.

Richard Atkinson, Policy Officer for British Canoeing, said: “Effective management of floating pennywort can only be achieved through strategic, coordinated action.

The partnership established on the River Medway is a great example of how government organisations and community groups can work together to make a real difference to the environment.

Learning from the success of this project, and similar efforts in other catchments, plans are being developed to expand this approach nationwide. By working together, and establishing local partnerships, it is hoped the further spread of floating pennywort is prevented and its impacts in established catchments is minimised.

Recently Lord Gardiner, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) joined a group of paddlers at the Medway to observe the removal in action. He said,

www.britishcanoeing.org.uk

“Floating pennywort profoundly disrupts aquatic habitats for insects, fish and other wildlife, and disrupts how people interact with England’s rivers and lakes. Today’s move is a step in the right direction for improving our cherished waterways.”

“As a result of this success, and other similar examples across the country, British Canoeing, the Angling Trust, the Environment Agency and the Non-Native Species Secretariat are working together on a new national strategy to tackle floating pennywort. This strategy will be launched this spring.”

Locally, volunteer efforts are continuing to expand, and a second local partnership is being developed with British Canoeing on the River Thames at Reading. This partnership is a pilot which, over the coming months, will be reviewed, refined and expanded to deliver a number of the recommendations to the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) Invasive Species Inquiry (2019).

The EAC called for a more strategic, catchment-based approach to invasive species management and the formation of a ‘citizen’s army’ to help to tackle invasive species.

How you can help To find out more and volunteer, please contact Richard Atkinson at Richard.atkinson@ britishcanoeing.org.uk

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8

NEW YEAR

NEW CHALLENGES As we paddle into the new year, our thoughts begin to flow towards the challenges and resolutions we’d like to set ourselves for the next 12 months. Establishing some achievable targets is a great way to stay motivated, focused and protect our overall wellbeing.

To get you thinking and the inspiration flowing, we’ve pulled together a list of six challenges every paddler can strive to accomplish. Which one will you choose?

rs in January

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FEATURE

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Commit to p a www.britishcanoeing.org.uk

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Challenge yo urself to com plete a 10K p of 2021 and add feel the man y benefits of b le throughout each mon and deep in th eing outside nature. Why on the wate not use this places to pa r challenge to ddle too? To explore som discover mo gopaddling.i e new re places to nfo/find-pad paddle head dling-trails/ to The great th ing about th is challenge your level an is you can ta d set yourse ilor the dista lf your own or increasing nce to m onthly targe the distance t by decreasi you aim to p challenging ng addle. To ma you could tr ke it more y: • Paddling 15km or eve n a half mara • Challeng tho e yourself to paddle 10K tw n once every month ice a month

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Develop you r paddling skills with a course

Why not challe nge yourself to British Canoe complete one ing ’s Paddle A of wards! If you been paddlin haven’t g too long an d would like to your indepen develop dent paddling skills in a dyn fun environm a mic and ent, then loo k no further. or Explore aw T he Discover ards provide paddlers with understandin a better g of the fund amentals of p evolve your d addling and ecision makin g and practica you more con l skills, giving fidence on th e water.

Visit gopaddlin g.info for mo re informatio course near yo n and find a u.

lean up

Become a cha mpion of you r local waterw organising a p ay by addle clean u p. N to keep your local waterway ot only are you helping tidy but you’l helping to stre l also be ngthen the pa ddling comm for fairer acce unity ’s voice ss.

Visit clearacc essclearwate rs.org.uk/org clean-up/ for anise-a-padd info lepaddle cleanu rmation on how you can o rganise a p.

lised e serious and specia or m t ge to g in ok Lo ences? bark on new experi in your craft to em

rsonal t to check out the Pe an w ll u’ yo en th u If this is yo awards (PPA). There are 39 Performance Awards portunity to every paddler the op g in id ov pr e bl la ai ort av y aspect of paddlesp er ev in ill sk r ei th p titive develo hitewater and compe w to g in ur to er at from flatw e polo. sports such as cano se for you, head to To find the right cour m paddlesuptraining.co

Keep a paddli

ng diary, blo g or photo album

Keep a track o f all the padd ling adventure you’ve been o s n throughout 2021 by loggi them in a han ng dwritten diary , photo album you want to go or, if digital, why n ot set up a blo an Instagram g or page?

Not only will an Instagram page remind of the beauty you found on the water, but yo also find it is u’ll a great way to keep yourself motivated an d serve as a u seful guide fo seeing your p r rogression in a visual format .

Canoe Focus Winter 2021

British Canoeing members can enjoy 50% off PPA candidate fees.

Visit gopaddling.info for more information and find a course near you.

a Paddle C

FEATURE

lenge developed chal lly fu re ca t gh ei d the United Go Paddling has locations aroun ic n o ic g n ri ve recognised routes co ese nationally th f o e n o ct le hat inspires Kingdom. Se ur ability and w yo n o ed as b s plete it. You challenge route yourself to com ge n le al ch d lace you you the most an a brand new p r ve co is d ht ig um never know - yo ! ted is ex never knew it up a gear?

Fancy stepping tes and e challenge rou th f o st ge ig b you n the which will see , ge Why not take o n le al h C s Three Lake Tegid (Lake check out the ural lakes: Llyn at n st ge n lo s d (11 tackling the UK’ mere in Englan er d in W , s) ile (7 m iles).

Bala) in Wales Scotland (25 m in e w A ch Lo miles) and before vid restrictions co l ca lo k ec ch Just be sure to your journey. setting out on dling.info/ for? Visit gopad g n ti ai w u yo suit you!

So what are nd the route to fi d an s ge n le gopaddlingchal

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9

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12

NEW Leadership Award Pathways British Canoeing’s new suite of Leadership Awards launched on 4 January 2021. Designed to better support you to lead fun, safe, enjoyable trips, the awards are based on your groups’ needs and aspirations.

The new awards are ideal for clubs, centres and activity providers looking to lead groups on single or mixed craft journeys, from sheltered water to advanced water.

The new suite includes additional award pathways to support your leading activity.

COACHING & LEADERSHIP

Paddlesport Touring Leader

Stadium White Water Leader

The Paddlesport Touring Leader supports you to lead mixed craft journeys on inland open water environments and slow moving rivers. The Leader can choose the craft from which they work and can look after others in both single discipline and mixed fleets, from SUPs and Open Canoes to Sit on Tops. This award is ideal for clubs participating in trips and journeys with a mixed range of craft.

If you often paddle at artificial white water courses then check out the Stadium White Water Leader Award. This course will equip you to lead groups of paddlers on man-made courses such as Lee Valley White Water Centre and Pinkston, in Scotland.

This is also a great award for Paddlesport Leaders looking to expand their remit.

SUP Inland Open Water Leader The SUP Inland Open Water Leader enables you to take stand up paddle boarders on trips on inland open water and slow moving water.

As a Leader, you can work independently or be deployed by a club, centre or organisation and support trips ranging from educational experiences, social adventures or guided tours.

www.britishcanoeing.org.uk

SUP Coastal Leader Want to lead stand up paddle boarders along stretches of coastline? Then this is the award for you! The coastal environment is a wonderful place to journey and share with others, and SUPs are a great craft to explore this on.

Your personalised journey to gaining a Leadership Award Paddlers have different skills, knowledge and experiences, so we have designed each of the new Leadership Awards with direct entry options. This gives you the choice to select the best route for your personalised learning journey, saving you time and money.

Optional training and direct entry opportunities mean you can create your own development pathway. You choose whether to attend formal training courses, or develop your personal skills, leadership and safety and rescue knowledge with the help of a mentor or through your club or organisation.

To find out more about the Leadership Awards, visit the British Canoeing Awarding Body website (www.britishcanoeingawarding.org.uk/ new-leadership-awards), or book your training and assessment courses with your National Association today!

“Clubbing together”

13 13

With Russ SMith Russ Smith is British Canoeing’s Area Development Officer for the Midlands and has been paddling for over 50 years. During his career he won gold in the K1 team event at the 1987 ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships in Bourg St.-Maurice. Russ still enjoys chasing the old slalom poles down a rapid when he gets the opportunity, but now concentrates on widening engagement and participation in paddling around the Midlands.

Over the past few months Russ has been part of a team which has been looking at ways to improve resources and knowledge sharing for clubs and coaches. Here he tells us more about what’s on offer for clubs, coaches and leaders over the coming months. Russ take it away!

“Instead, this is a shout out to let all club representatives know about our new webinar series and brand new Clubhouse facility providing you with a central hub for everything coaching, development and more!”

Clubhouse

Webinars

“British Canoeing has recently launched a new ‘Clubhouse’ portal, providing a place for club representatives to interact with one another. So whether you have a burning question that needs answering at a committee meeting, or want to link up with another club to organise an interclub paddle, club members can do it all from the Clubhouse portal.

Following the fantastic reception we received after the webinars which ran throughout 2020, we’re pleased to say the series will continue into 2021.

“The new online facility addresses feedback from club representatives who said information and resources were hard to find, so we hope you find the Clubhouse a valued place to find a variety of club specific information and resources.”

www.britishcanoeing.org.uk/guidance-resources/ clubs-centres-providers/clubs/the-clubhouse

The previous webinars provided an opportunity for club representatives to come together to share best practice, discuss subjects and exchange top tips and handy hints on topics including club membership systems, deploying coaches and leaders for club activity and the benefits of running club trips.

Webinars in 2021 will cover a range of topics including: • Club Leader and Coach CPD • Running an event • Deploying coaches and leaders in your club To view the Club Webinar programme for 2021 and to book your space, head to the British Canoeing website: www.britishcanoeing.org.uk/guidance-resources/ clubs-centres-providers/clubs/club-webinars “Covid may not have gone completely but I believe 2021 is going to be a great year for getting back on the water and doing what we love. In the meantime I’m off to practice my dance moves for when we no longer have to socially distance.”

Canoe Focus Winter 2021

For more information on The Clubhouse please visit:

CLUBS & CENTRES

“Okay, so it’s January and the title ‘Clubbing Together’ isn’t my attempt at getting us together on a socially distanced dance floor to boogie around to the Top 10 hits of 2020 to burn off that second helping of Christmas pud that just won’t budge!

14

Paddling and periods Whether you have a menstrual cycle or not, it’s important to understand the impacts that it can have physically on yourself, members of your group or as a coach or leader too.

Having a period certainly doesn’t mean no paddling, and it most definitely doesn’t mean you can’t plan awesome adventures. But what it might mean is you can use and embrace your cycle to make the most productive use of your time. By understanding your flow and hormonal levels, as well as practicalities like where you can change a pad, cup or tampon on a paddle adventure, it takes a whole level of stress out of the equation for both paddler and leader or coach. So, let’s get stuck in!

Females experience a period approximately every 28 days as part of their menstrual cycle (although this can fluctuate from individual to individual and be longer or shorter). This is a normal cyclical process and can be an indicator for health monitoring and reproductive status.

#SHEPADDLES

So what on earth do periods have to do with paddling!?

Well, the whole cycle from start to finish has an effect on hormone levels which in turn means there’s likely to be some days when you’re on top of the world, and others when you feel tired and lethargic. Then there’s a whole bunch of days in-between. We thought we’d take a look into the different considerations for paddling on your period so coaches and paddlers alike can be more mindful of their impact on performance as well as the practical considerations when planning a day out on the water.

Did you know, various phases can affect your body in different ways?

Menstruation = Your energy, focus, and productivity levels are at their lowest during menstruation. Give yourself time to rejuvenate in this time and get plenty of rest and sleep.

www.britishcanoeing.org.uk

The Follicular phase = You have heightened energy during this phase thanks to rising estrogen levels.

It’s a good time to learn and drive to succeed may be higher.

The Ovulation phase = The hormonal peak of testosterone gives you an outward focused energy, while the estrogen peak makes you feel energetic and proactive. This is the ‘go get ’em’ phase!

The Luteal phase = Productivity levels are low. It’s a natural winding-down time. You can take advantage of this phase’s reflective, intuitive nature.

Whether you paddle competitively or recreationally along the canals, tracking your cycle may provide some useful information to help get the best out of your paddling. There are a range of apps available to track your menstrual cycle including (but not limited to) Flo, Natural Cycles, Clue, Fitrwoman, Garmin Connect.

Period Power Knowing and understanding your own cycle is important. But if you’re a leader or a coach, considering how this information might also affect: • Members at your club; remember it’s not just teenagers that might be affected by this • Clients on a course you’re running • Any females you train on the water or in the gym • Multi-day adventures you’re planning – are there places to change? Are you making the most of your own cycle?

Where to go for further information The British Canoeing #ShePaddles initiative collated information throughout November, with further information about paddling and periods. Click here to visit the #ShePaddles news section. https://gopaddling.info/paddling-adventuresand-periods-keep-paddling-on-your-period/ Looking to connect with other women?

Click here to join the women’s paddling community on Facebook.

Into the Maelstrom:

15

Scottish Sea Kayakers Norwegian Adventure 40 Years On In January, the Scottish Maritime Museum will be opening a new exhibition celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the first formal Scottish sea kayaking expedition.

Into the Maelstrom: The Scottish Kayak Expedition to North West Norway 1980, includes highlights of two of the four original ‘Baidarka Explorer’ kayaks as well as striking photographs and 8mm film footage from the expedition.

In 1978 friends, Jim Breen, Angus Mathieson, Bill Turnbull and Peter Wilson were experienced kayakers, in their mid-twenties, looking for their next challenge.

Together they would circumnavigate the Lofoten and Vesterålen island groups of north west Norway.

The expedition took many months of organising, and the route was planned using maps of Norway, Admiralty charts and the Norway Pilot Book. The important information was transferred to local maps which were then waterproofed for easy access and use on the kayak decks. At the same time, a push for sponsorship was embarked upon to raise the £10,000 in funds needed. After sending out 800 letters, the team secured sponsorship, equipment and food from a wide range of companies including J&B Whisky, Fred Olsen Cruise Lines and Baxters foods.

The team paddled nearly 400 miles in total. On their return, a formal report was written which included a thorough breakdown of the expedition and ‘daily diary’.

Team Leader Jim Breen said about the experience “Today, with the benefits of the Internet, fast communication, comprehensive information and ease of travel and transportation, supported by a global kayaking infrastructure, Into the Maelstrom: would make this journey so much easier. We were proud however to The Scottish Kayak Expedition to complete this ‘first’ for Scottish sea North West Norway 1980 runs kayaking leaving us ‘old guys’ with from Sat 16th January – Mon 3rd some very special memories.”

May 2021 at the Scottish Maritime Museum, Irvine and from Sat 8th May 2021 - Tues 7st Sept 2021 at The Denny Ship Model Experiment Tank, Dumbarton

All Images courtesy of J. Breen

Canoe Focus Winter 2021

On 1 July the expedition team launched from Stangnes on the island of Hinnøya. Over the next 28 days they would experience stunning views of the Norwegian islands, with their rocky coastlines and majestic mountain backdrops.

The team’s careful planning and the favourable weather conditions had worked to their advantage when crossing the ‘Maelstrom’. If the weather had been bad, the crossing would have been near impossible due to the effect of wind against the fierce tidal streams which could reach up to 12.4 miles (20 kilometres) per hour. Although the Maelstrom was ‘kind’ when they crossed, they had to work very hard to counter the many fast and confused tidal flows running in the large area.

FEATURE

The expedition took place 200 miles within the Arctic Circle during the summer of 1980 and include the first recorded dual crossing by sea kayak off the treacherous Moskenstraumen. Also known as the Maelstrom, it is one of the largest whirlpool areas in the world. Fuelled by the story of the first dual crossing of the Maelstrom, the expedition gained media attention, appearing in newspapers and on television.

That month saw a heatwave in Norway and the team endured paddling in extreme temperatures. The phenomenon of the midnight sun meant that the team could be flexible with paddling times, sometimes launching at 1am to avoid paddling at the hottest times of day.

16

Five reasons why a British Canoeing membership is fantastic value!

Join or renew your British Canoeing membership for 2021 and get instant access to these five fabulous membership benefits!

Most affordable way of obtaining a comprehensive waterways licence covering over 4500km of waterways across England and Wales

MEMBERSHIP

If licences were purchased directly across the different authorities, to cover the same number of waterways included within a British Canoeing membership it would cost over £130 (£38.20 for the Environment Agency, £53.71 for the Canal & River Trust and £33.84 for the Broads Authority)

Discounted craft insurance provided by Towergate British Canoeing members can access an exclusive preferential rate for craft insurance. Covering you for theft and accidental damage for any type of craft up to £2000, including kayaks, canoes, stand up paddle boards, alongside cover for paddling equipment such as paddles, helmets and buoyancy aids

Public and Products Liability Insurance

Exclusive member discounts and offers

Providing you with an essential safety net if you are ever required to pay compensation to any third party for accidental injury to them or their property during the period of insurance

We’ve joined forces with a number of key partners to offer all members a range of discounts and offers!

Communications & Resources You’ll receive our Members’ News featuring paddling related top tips and handy hints, latest news stories and updates, exclusive offers and much more! You’ll also be able to stay in tune with paddling news from across the globe with a digital version of the Paddler, including a 24 page supplement of Canoe Focus, as part of your membership

• • • • • • • •

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www.britishcanoeing.org.uk

Join today by visiting

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Not only will you be receiving value for money, but your membership contribution is reinvested back into projects that benefit the whole paddling community.

Unlock and start saving with British Caneoing Rewards!

17

British Canoeing’s Membership Rewards Scheme is our newest offering for members! Join the scheme for just £2.50 (the price of a small coffee) and enjoy an array of great online savings at over 100 top brands, retailers, supermarkets, restaurants, attractions and many more!

Recuperate the cost of your membership in savings throughout the year. Here’s just a flavour of the sort of savings you could make…

Continuously save on food and drink throughout the year at some of the UK’s leading supermarkets, including M&S, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Asda

MEMBERSHIP MEMBERSHIP

Save on your 2021 outdoor clothing and equipment with great online savings at top outdoor retailers including 15% off at Blacks, Millets and Ultimate Outdoors. Members can even save an extra 10% off on the discount card price at Go Outdoors

Save big on attractions and days out at GoApe, Bear Grylls Adventure, SeaLife centres, Madame Tussauds, LegoLand, Blackpool Tower Ballroom and many more Exclusive discounts can also be enjoyed at Hotels.com, Cottages.com, Forest Holidays, Alton Towers Enchanted Village and many more options to suit everyone’s needs. Perfect for that long overdue staycation Reward scheme holders can take advantage of a scrumptious spread of discounts available across a number of the UK’s top eateries such as Chiquito, Frankie & Benny’s, Gourmet Burger Kitchen, Ed’s Easy Diner and many more

Canoe Focus Winter 2021

Visit britishcanoeing.org.uk/rewards to learn how you can start saving today. If you’re already a member and want to add this to your membership please call our membership team on 0300 0119 500.

18

Funding launched to protect and improve the paddling environment Late last year, British Canoeing and its charity partner, the Canoe Foundation, announced a funding pot of up to £100,000 to support projects that create better access to water for recreational users and projects that protect the paddling environment.

PADDLING CANOE FOUNDATION SCOTLAND

Paddlesport saw an incredible uplift in interest during 2020, with British Canoeing membership rising to over 62,000. Sales of new boats and equipment also soared, with a considerable rise being attributed to stand up paddle boarding.

With thousands more people taking to the water during the summer, many locations around the country have been under increasing pressure, facing challenges with parking and physical access to the water.

In recognition of this increase in activity, the Canoe Foundation, together with a contribution from British Canoeing, has made the additional cash investment available to fund applications with a strong case and plans for implementing projects that will improve access to paddling around their area.

Examples of how similar funding provided by the Canoe Foundation has been used previously, include the replacement of a landing stage on the River Severn in Shropshire and slipway repairs in Somerset, providing improved access for paddlers.

Hampton Loade, River Severn, Bridgnorth, Shropshire www.britishcanoeing.org.uk

Shropshire Wildlife Trust and the National Trust worked alongside other key partners, organisations and individuals to develop resources to support safe and responsible exploration of the River Severn in Shropshire.

The project aimed to create a Severn Canoe Trail and make improvements to the location of a rope ferry at Hampton Loade which had become defunct, unsafe and remained in poor condition.

The location is a popular access point for the river as it has a car park and is a useful distance from upstream and downstream access and egress points. The project aimed to remove the old

structure and replace it with a new, simple, more robust landing stage, improving access overall and minimising the likelihood of damage by flooding.

The re-profiled access path was topped with fine stone and compacted, making it easier to de-silt should local flooding occur. In contrast to the previous structure the improvements are simpler to maintain for the National Trust Ranger and their team of volunteers.

Shropshire Wildlife Trust River Projects Manager, Pete Lambert was delighted to see the first paddlers using the new landing to access the river following the first easing of lockdown last summer.

He said, “Hampton Loade has a long history as a crossing place for travellers to safely span the Severn. A ‘loade’ is a traditional name for such a ferry crossing down the Severn and appears a number of times from the Welsh border to the sea.

“Thanks to the Canoe Foundation and Sport England funding and the collaboration of the landing owners at the National Trust, the new landing stage has replaced the old battered structure. Shropshire Wildlife Trust oversaw the project and the first of the improved river access projects associated with the Severn Canoe Trail was completed.”

You can follow the Severn Canoe Trail on social @ SevernCanoeTrail or head to severncanoetrail.com for information on exploring the area by river.

Huish Bridge, River Parrett, Langport, Somerset

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Residents, councils, the Inland Waterways Association and local businesses were keen to see improvements made to a slipway along the River Parrett in Somerset and improve access for boaters and paddlers alike.

The lower end of the slipway had largely disintegrated, broken away and needed significant repairs. As such, access was limited to a narrow set of steps at the west end of Cocklemoor in Langport. The slipway was acquired by Langport Town Council in 2016 as part of the Langport River Project.

CANOE FOUNDATION PADDLING SCOTLAND

Successful completion of the major repairs to the slipway have seen increased use of the river by visiting boaters, canoeists, kayakers and paddle boarders, who are now able to access and egress the river at this location and make use of over severn miles of navigable water on the non-tidal River Parrett and its tributaries (the rivers Yeo and Isle), which cross the Somerset Levels and Moors.

These improvements and a canoe trail will shortly be available on the Go Paddling website.

gopaddling.info/find-paddling-trails/

Canoe Foundation Trustee, David Belbin, said:

Grants from £500-£10,000 will be made available, with applications being received via the online application form until 28 February 2021.

If you or an organisation you know would like to find out more about the application process and funding, full details can be found on the Canoe Foundation website: www.canoefoundation.org.uk/online-fundingapplications/

Applications must be received by 28 February 2021 to be considered and the fund is open to applicants from across the UK.

Canoe Canoe Focus Focus Late Winter Autumn 2021 2020

“We are really pleased to be able to make this funding available to a whole range of potential recipients, and are keen to lend support to local communities for the provision of sustainable and accessible places for people to access the water.”

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A first-hand look at

British Canoeing’s Advanced Sea Kayaking Leadership Award British Canoeing’s Advanced Sea Kayak Award is the highest ranked sea kayak leadership qualification within its portfolio. The award focuses on paddling on the sea in winds over force four and/or tides over two knots, and provides those with the qualification the ability to lead safe and enjoyable, single or multi-day journeys.

ACCESS #SHEPADDLES & ENVIRONMENT

Julie Perren, aged 56 from Totnes, is one of just a handful of female Sea Kayak Leaders to have recently completed this advanced award, so we sat down with her - albeit virtually - to find out more about her journey into paddling and her progression to obtaining her prestigious Leadership Award. True to form, Julie had just returned from a paddling trip to clean a beach near Dartmouth, when she took our call.

“Coaching wasn’t an obvious fit for me,” she said. “I was a classic example of a woman lacking in confidence. I worried that my age and small frame would be an issue.

“I was in my early forties when I began paddling, so was mid-forties by the time I began taking up the qualifications. The thought of completing the 3* and 4* qualifications seemed completely unattainable to me, let alone the Advanced Sea Kayak Leader Award!” she laughs.

www.britishcanoeing.org.uk www.britishcanoeing.org.uk

“Initially paddling was an activity I did alongside my partner and daughter and we joined Totnes Canoe Club together. I’ve been a member for 12 years now and Club Chair for two. After two or three years of paddling recreationally, I was approached by a member of the club to see if I would become a coach. There were 22 coaches in the club at that time and only two of them female, so my arm was twisted and my journey into paddle coaching began.”

With more paddling experience behind her and at the age of 51, Julie was persuaded by British Canoeing’s Head of Coaching and Qualifications, Lee Pooley, to attend a 4* Assessment (now the Sea Kayak Leader) in which she was successful in achieving.

This year, five years on from that assessment, and lots more paddling later, Julie attended the 5* training (now Advanced Sea Kayak Leader) and completed her assessment last Autumn.

“The thought of being assessed filled me with dread - I hadn’t been under that sort of pressure since being at school,” said Julie.

“Her enthusiasm and her enjoyment of paddling and the way Julie introduces others to the sport on a very individual basis, is fantastic.

“The conditions leaders need to be able to operate in, to pass this assessment are not benign, and this puts some individuals off as they assume you need to be physically strong.

In actual fact, the Award is all about experience, using the conditions to your advantage, good technique, knowledge and practice,” added Lee. The Advanced Sea Kayak Award requires an understanding of a variety of sea conditions so Julie spent a lot of time travelling around the country to places such as Anglesey in the run up to her assessment to practice in environments that provided the necessary conditions.

“Undertaking this Award took me out of my comfort zone, but has taught me a lot about my own strength and capabilities.

“I’ve also learnt a lot from completing the Award, particularly that I am better than I thought I was and to trust myself more. It has given me more confidence in the skills I have.”

Due to Covid-19, fewer participants completed their Advanced Sea Kayak Leader Award during 2020 and Julie was the only female to do so.

Going forward female participation numbers across all qualifications and awards in paddling is something Julie hopes to see increase.

“My advice to any woman thinking of taking an award at whatever level, is to try it. There are so many reasons why you shouldn’t or can’t but don’t let age or ability - or being female be one of them.”

Julie is a British Canoeing #ShePaddles Ambassador and hopes to inspire more women to take up roles leading and coaching paddling. When she isn’t paddling herself, she is mentoring others along their journey through her own mentoring scheme for women. If you would like to know more you can contact Julie at julie.perren18@gmail.com To find out more about the Sea Kayaking Leadership Award and any of the British Canoeing qualifications head to the brand new Paddles Up Training website.

Canoe Focus Winter 2021

The assessment took two and a half days to complete and included navigation tasks, a daylight paddle session as well as a paddle on the sea at night.

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#SHEPADDLES

Lee Pooley, Head of Coaching and Qualifications at British Canoeing, said: “I have had the pleasure of knowing Julie for many years, and watched her develop both as a paddler and coach. Julie feels the need to master something at the highest level and beyond before going for any assessment.

Julie said: “I love exploring new environments and travelling around to explore different waters, so this was an enjoyable aspect of my preparation for the assessment.

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Our 2020

Virtual Award Winners

Following an extraordinary year for all, the 2020 British Canoeing Virtual Awards provided a chance to celebrate the great spirit of the paddling community throughout the challenges of Covid-19. The awards recognised paddlers, clubs, coaches, leaders, volunteers or individuals who gave up their time and went the extra mile during Covid-19, making a significant difference to their community through their contribution.

All members of the paddling community were welcome to submit unlimited nominations for each award and we would like to thank everyone who took the time to submit a nomination.

Winner - Olivia Moore

VIRTUAL AWARDS

During the first phase of lockdown, eight-year-old Olivia Moore’s mental wellbeing took a hit. As the reality that there would be no paddling adventures or escaping the stresses of daily life through paddling for several weeks sank in, Olivia’s confidence began to take a hit.

It was at this point that the World Back Yard Rolling Competition began sweeping across social media and Olivia was given the reason she needed to get back in her boat each day.

The Digital Award - Best lockdown video/photo sponsored by Towergate This award was presented for the best paddling related digital piece showcasing how the nominee continued to love and embrace paddling during the summer lockdown.

Throughout April, Olivia spent every day trying to improve her onland rollover technique, posting regular updates on her Facebook page. With hardly enough strength to rock the boat, let alone roll the kayak over, Olivia demonstrated her drive, passion and love for paddling by diligently practicing her rolls, with a beaming smile.

Engagement Award sponsored by Igloo Energy www.britishcanoeing.org.uk

This award is in recognition of an individual or group of people who have gone above and beyond to engage paddlers and keep motivation high during lockdown.

Winner - Lynne Marie Dale Throughout the summer Lynne volunteered her time to put on socially distanced, Covid secure paddling events covering canoeing, kayaking and SUP with Black Dog Outdoors. Black Dog Outdoors is a small, volunteer led organisation that supports people to improve their mental health and wellbeing by getting them outdoors and active for free.

Winner - Ben Broadbent / Abingdon Canoe Polo Team

Best Use of Lockdown sponsored by Jaffa

Abingdon Canoe Polo Team wanted to maintain engagement with the sport and keep their team spirit high during lockdown, whilst also improving their coaching knowledge. To do this, the team wrote a coaching handbook which they have used to help plan the delivery of sessions to less experienced paddlers in the club. This involved weekly Zoom calls to discuss the content for each chapter and edit sections of drafted copy.

This award recognises an individual or a group’s outstanding contribution, commitment and time during lockdown.

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Ben Broadbent said: “We are a group of sixth form students from Abingdon who have enjoyed playing Canoe Polo for the past four years. Last year we completed our paddlesport instructor award and since September have been running ‘intro to canoe polo’ sessions twice a week for younger students at school.”

This award recognises an individual or a group who inspired others with their creative achievements since lockdown began in March.

Winner - Jordan Wylie On the weekend of the 26 July 2020 Jordan, 36, from Blackpool, Lancashire began an official world record attempt to complete a full circumnavigation of Great Britain on a stand up paddleboard in aid of Frontline Children.

Throughout the build up to the challenge Jordan spent countless hours doing media rounds, both nationally and internationally, to raise awareness of the challenge, SUPing and his overarching message of “dream big, embrace the spirit of adventure and do it safely”.

VIRTUAL AWARDS

Best Creative Activity sponsored by Vow Nutrition

Jordan is currently continuing on his expedition and regularly keeps his social media followers updated with weekly short films, regular blog posts, podcasts and various social media updates. As this goes to print, Jordan has paddled 2305.13km!

To learn more about Jordan’s world record attempt visit www.thegreatbritishpaddle.com

Winner - Sarah Jane Coombes

Not only has Sarah helped so many paddlers, but she has juggled this whilst managing the Southend Coastguard team during its busiest year on record. Southend became the second busiest Coastguard station in the UK (out of approx. 350 stations) throughout 2020 recording over 240 incidents.

This award recognises an individual who has gone above and beyond during Covid-19.

Canoe Focus Winter 2021

Sarah runs the British Canoeing affiliated club ‘Blue Therapy Paddle Community’ based in Southend, Essex. Throughout 2020 Sarah provided the community with countless Covid secure paddling activities to suit all abilities, from complete novices to more developed SUPers. In doing so she created a near 1,000 strong community of paddlers in a town with a population of around 10,000 people.

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Catching your breath in

FINISTERE The French capital of downwinding

Are ready to be paddle off the beaten track? Are you prepared to be greeted by daily tides, bathed in coastal sunshine, and blown by prevailing sea winds? If so, then you are ready to downwind in Finistere!

By Helen Treherot North West Finistere is downwind heaven, but where exactly is Finistere?

Finistere is the most northerly department in Brittany, a region that also includes three other departments. The name indicates what you will find; it is Fini-Terre, land’s end!

Two things that you will get in North Finistere are wind and waves. People who live here are addicted to them both; it takes time for visitors to understand and accept these elements. The reason why North West Finistere is so beautiful because of these two elements!

It is thanks to these two elements that make Finistere perfect for surf ski. Finistere’s unique geographical orientation means that you can find a downwind run at anyone time, sheltered, gnarly, flat water or adrenaline pumping. Whatever you want, you can get it!

Cote des legendes

My paddle base is Guisseny, a village founded by an Irish priest Saint Sezny who sailed from Ireland, there is a very strong Celtic connection in Finistere. Guisseny is part of the Cote Des Legendes an area made famous by the famous ship wreckers of yesteryear. This is definitely off the traditional tourist trail. The coastline is wild, Atlantic waves crash on the huge granite boulders that scatter the coastline, some say these huge granite boulders are giants that have been turned into stone.

These stones make the Cote Des Legendes a life-size playground for a wide range of watersports, including surf ski.

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It is no surprise that some of the top French downwind paddlers come from this area, and if you want to see where the magic lies, read on!

In our area we have named the downwind runs in reference to the Moloko! The grandfather of all downwind runs!

SKOOLIKO We are starting local. This is one of the of my favourite runs and is at our base, Guisseny. Guisseny is located on a bay named ‘the Gulf of Tressény’. Measuring two kilometres by 500 metres, it opens out onto the Atlantic. This bay is subjected to substantial tidal variations, emptying twice daily on the low tide and refilling on the high. Unlike British measurements, the way of talking about tides, is by referring to the coefficient, with 115 being the highest tidal variance (spring tides) and the lowest being 45 (neap tides). It is these coefficients that rule this area. Everyone knows when the Grand Marees are coming, from fishermen to cockle pickers and more importantly surf skiers!

On spring tides this bay fills to the brim, this coupled with the winter waves ignites it into life!

Everything about this bay screams wind from October through to March; it is the wind seekers paradise. The entry point to this is Barrachou, which takes its name from the word windy place in the local language, Breton.

On the high tide and in a north westerly swell, this bay lights up if the swell forecast reads anything over two metres at high tide a rolling wave enters the bay creating runs that start 1,000 metres out and end at the primary school that is situated at the end of the bay. Making good connections between the wave sections allows to jump each zone in the bay and all over.

The goal is always to see if you connect with the waves to take you to the local primary school that sits right at the

end of the bay

There are sections to this wave that you can engage in to increase the wave size or the wind strength you want to have on your back, and when you have had enough, there are channels to follow that pull you back out and restart the run, the run known as the lift.

When it is four metres out in the ocean, a perfect twometre wave is pushed into the bay.The beauty of this bay is that when things go wrong, you can always bail out at any number of the beaches alongside the bay.

This place is the perfect training ground for learning how to catch bumps, and paddle downwind.The goal is always to see if you connect with the waves to take you to the local primary school that sits right at the end of the bay, which is the reason for the name! The beauty of this location is that you have a ready-made spectators area along the bay, so you can give the locals a wave as you catch a beautiful Skooliko wave!

ABERLIKO Aber is the Breton word for where the rivers join the sea, in North Finistere, we have three Abers, Aber W’rach, Aber Benoit and Aber Ildut, all tidal rivers that run into the North Atlantic. Aber W’rach is the Aber of my choosing, it runs between Plouguerneau and its namesake Aber W’rach, and is the closest one to my base.

The Aber W’rach has a north-westerly orientation.

Anything over 25 knots and swell size over three metres this is the place to come. It offers protection, but at the same time, the orientation of the river means that it offers runs, ideal for interval training downwind, without the added stress of a cresting four metre wave hammering down on you!

The beauty of this spot is the beauty and history; the Aber W’rach run starts at the Iles aux Americans.The Americans seconded this island in the first world war to build an aquaplane base.The area is lined with oyster racks. In the summer, when you paddle (in calmer conditions), the whole area is filled with the oyster farmers’ noises shaking the cages.

Further down the river, the topography deepens, channelling the wind, ideal for a direct downwind, strong winds but safe. Here, the river runs into a small gorge that was formed in the last glacial period; the banks are lined with trees, with small inlets to turn into, a perfect

Guisseny

Guisseny Bay

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resting place if you need to catch your breath! The midsection of this run is Paluden; once you turn the corner the river becomes less influenced by the sea and more into a freshwater paddle, now you are entering farming country.This run Aberliko is the natures run, when it's too nautical out at sea, like many seafarers before, you come to the Abers to be protected!

RADILIKO This is one of the best downwinders in Finistere, is based on The Rade.The Rade is a body of water that forms the Port of Brest. A huge nautical centre, you will find any kind of watersports action here. When the wind is south-westerly, and the tide is rising you can paddle from Crozon Peninsula right up the Rade, a good run would be up to 10 KM. For those who can’t secure a one way lift to Crozon (or have a nice friend to drop them off), the alternative is to get in at Moulin Blanc.

This is the crème de la crème of downwinding, and you don’t have to go for the full monty. Once off the slip, you have to paddle upwind as far as you can towards a famous yellow shipping buoy, before launching yourself into mid-channel and starting your downwind run! The further you go into the middle of the channel, the more ‘engaged’ the paddling is! If you are in the mood for something calmer you can keep to the channel’s side, and you will still be able to

connect to the bumps. Downwind here on the Rade is one of the best sensations and experiences, especially going under the famous Brest Bridge, once you have made it to this point you have had the best 30 minutes that the Rade can give you!

These are a small selection of the downwind runs in Finistere. If you want to experience the true Finistere experience then head over to Barrachou paddle, we have every wind you will want and create the best downwind holiday you could hope for!

https://goo.gl/maps/tQMzYLqFj1r3DdDp9

Aber W’rach

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Words and photos: Lucinda Norris As a technicolour sunset descended over Svinesundsbroen Bridge, the sky above me looked aflame with orange and red sunbeams.The light danced between the bridge’s support cables, which marks the crossing from Sweden into Norway.

Underneath I saw my first glimpse of a winding body of water spotted with little red houses along the banks of the Ringdalsfjord. I had arrived in Norway to explore its scenic waters in my self-built van conversion. I am not a SUP instructor, just an ambitious lady with a passion for SUP, with a heart full of adventure armed with an inflatable paddleboard. Norway is a diverse country holding some of the world's most diverse landscapes.The following article is my experiences from exploring them on a budget as a solo female traveller.

TOP SUP DESTINATIONS

DALEN

From the North Sea’s wild waters to glacial lakes, Norway gives you the opportunity for some amazing coastal paddling to experience seals, dolphins, and whales in their natural habitats on the north coast.

In the mountains to the east, turquoise lakes filled with freezing glacial water, flow thunderously into slowly winding fjords. Water has carved this ancient landscape into an adventure playground for a Paddleboard. Norway truly does hold some of Europe's last wild and remote places. I spent 14 hours driving across alpine tundra in the Jotunheimen National Park, spending days without seeing a soul and eyes that ached from soaking in the majesty of the mountains that surrounded me.

However, there are more popular paths and routes to take with good reason, so I have made a list below of some popular and less popular spots I would recommend for a SUP adventure.

The town of Dalen is located in the southwest of the country located in the Telemark region. This beautifully quiet town is a sleepy place to visit off the main tourist trails. The banks of Dalen lead into the Banak Fjord, a long straight expanse of water that is narrow and boasts calm conditions in the summer.

Nestled inside a ridge lined valley with the sun setting to the southwest, a dusk paddle is a must following the sun down the valley. Clear waters and the sloping cliffs mean an excellent opportunity for a smooth paddle with little crosswinds.You can cast off from the campsite at the start of the town, just off the main road and use their all-day parking 50 metres away from the jetty.

A D V E N T U R E S

SCANDINAVIAN S U P

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REVSVATNET LAKE The lake is situated next to the Preikestolen’s famous hike also known as Pulpit Rock (a four-hour moderate hike from the car park).The clear alpine waters in the sun dazzle a blue colour and with its shallow depth, gives you calm conditions and a 360-degree view of some of the breathtaking mountains.The lake is easily accessible from the Songesand car ferry from Lysebotn, or you can take the car ferry from Oanes to drive the 20-minutes to the visitor's centre car park. SUP hire is available from the centre, and there are also lodges and camping available on site. I would advise you to go early or book ahead as the area receives many visitors during the summer season. If you prefer, you can also SUP the fjord underneath Pulpit Rock and start from Songesand; the Lysefjord is a wide and deep fjord. It boasts stunning views as you surf down under the rock faces towering 650 meters above you.

THE HELGELAND COAST The Helgeland coast is an archipelago in the county of Nordland.This Scandinavian outcrop has some wild places to surf the waves of the North Sea on a paddleboard. I would highly recommend a paddling tour of this area to see the wildlife and experience the island culture just south of the Arctic Circle. I would also advise using the small ferries or take a walking passenger boat to some of the more remote island outcrops.Træna, Dønna, and the UNESCO-protected islands of Vega are spectacular. I would be especially careful of the cold, fresh waters of the Arctic here and stay close to the shoreline at all times.

FJAERLAND A remote village that was not connected by road until the 1980s is a gem of the Fjærlandsfjorden, a place frozen in time.The fjord which branches north off the Sognefjorden and Nigardsbreen Glacier gives you a view of misty, snow-covered mountains as a backdrop as you paddle down this fjord seeing the seaweed dance about in the currents beneath you.There are a few different jetties to cast off from in the small town. I would recommend using the one on the high street to park your vehicle for a few hours.There are benches on the quayside, where you are welcome to use the local facilities, whilst you are drying out your gear.The village has become a giant bookshop. Its residents have lined the streets with shelves of open bookcases attached to people's houses, street signs, and shop windows for you to read and enjoy amongst the silent splendour - a wonderfully weird and unique little place.

GEIRANGER The famous Geirangerfjord is a UNESCO heritage site due to its thundering waterfalls cascading into the fjord below. The stunning surrounding valley has steep grass-covered mountains, which look like something from a fairy tale. Pioneers used to tether their sheep and children to the cliffs to stop them from falling down the steep slopes. There are many guided tours for SUP and Kayaking packages, which run from the Geiranger Kayak Centre in Hamlong. Or if you would like to be self-guided down for a few kilometres from Geiranger be careful of the cross current of fresh water, making steering at times difficult, along with traffic from busy cruise liners.

LOEN Loen is the adventure capital of Norway. Mountain restaurants, one of Europe's highest Via Ferrata, kite surfing, paragliding, kayaking, and SUP fans are all drawn to this epicentre of adventure. SUP boards can be hired from the campsite to explore the bright turquoise glacial waters of the Innvikfjorden. I would also recommend the half an hour drive to the Oldevatnet Lake and camping in Briksdalen site as you sleep underneath the glacier and wake up to cloud inversions on its Peaks. It also has some sandy scheduled beaches to cast off from around the lake.

CITIES Oslo and Bergen also boast some beautiful opportunities for an urban adventure through travelling their inland waterways. I found Bergen a stunning place to explore by SUP taking in the Hanseatic heritage shop fronts and old cargo ports, which have backwaters that wind around Bryggans Harbour.

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TOP TIPS FOR AN EPIC TRIP l

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The SUP season ranges for most places from 20 May to 15 September Most fjords are many kilometres long but narrow; popular fjords especially have traffic from cruise ships and fishing boats. By researching local ferry times crossing times, you can avoid the traffic a little easier if you are self-guiding the waters alone.

Wild camping is allowed across Norway, and free camping is widely encouraged. Most rest areas have overnight facilities like toilets and showers and are popular facilities that are well cleaned and maintained for a small fee.

Ticks and mosquitos around the summer months are prevalent. I used a heavy-duty waterproof DEET if you are out on the water and I would recommend taking hydrocortisone and tick removal equipment whilst you travel.

Coverage and reception can be poor across Norway’s wild spots. I carried phone emergency numbers at all times and had a separate GPS tracker. You can find these online, fuel stations, and tourist information centres as you drive through Norway.

3D route maps or GPS on phones can be downloaded beforehand as reception can be poor and you don’t want to get lost mid-paddle and end up in a busy shipping lane in the fog.

Weather during July was 16-24°C (61-75°F) in August when I went, the temperatures soared to 31 °C. I also experienced fog, ice and sleet on a board as I spent time at altitude, so pack wisely depending on your locations.

COSTS If you are driving to your various destinations, you will be using toll roads. Some ferries and bridges are also included within toll charges and are easy and frequent to use. To pay for the tolls, you have to register your private vehicle with the government through the EPC online website. EPC will invoice you when your trip is over as they use your plates to track your vehicle on toll roads. After 2,379 km around Norway, my bill was around £53 for all the toll roads, bridges, and ferries I

used. If you have a hired vehicle, the car will be registered already, and costs may be included in your hire price, this is worth checking with the company.

Daily food and drink costs for a five-week trip in Norway came to £12 per day. I prepared most of my meals in my campervan and brought local fresh produce. I am a pescatarian and an alcohol nondrinker. I only eat fish, therefore fresh fish is plentiful and cheap, but the tax on other meats imported and alcohol is costly!

ACCOMMODATION For good hotels and hostels check out hihostels.no and visitnorway.com. In the places I have mentioned above the towns nearby have campsites, but wild camping is allowed in most of the National Parks and areas I have recommended. Out in the wild, I had no problem overnight camping; I used apps like ParkforNight to help me find a secluded place beside a lake or fjord to cast off from piers and beaches in the mornings. I built my campervan, which was my roaming accommodation and customised to make it a perfect adventure bus on a budget. If you would like to see and read more about my journeys, please subscribe to Vanlifewithluci.co.uk or follow me @vanlifewithluci on Instagram.

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More than

ONEGEAR revving up your forward stroke Words and photos: Bill Vonnegut Possibly the most important paddling skill is the forward stroke.

While most folks can hop in a kayak and move forward with no instruction, there are situations where a good forward stroke is essential. Environmental factors such as wind or current can stop or even reverse forward progress.

Having the ability to make an additional effort can significantly shorten paddling time and reduce fatigue. Taking some time to develop a second and third gear for your forward stroke will build confidence and is key to paddling in dynamic conditions.

Having confidence in personal ability is vital for improving paddling skills. Knowing an extra effort can be made for a short time can give individuals the confidence to execute the job at hand. Making a mental choice to provide this extra effort beyond the comfort zone is also needed.

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FIRST GEAR A paddling speed of three knots is widely recognized as average for a kayaker and can be obtained by most paddlers with a bit of practice. Nevertheless, there will be times when opposing environmental forces will require an additional effort. To improve comfort beyond the limits of calm protected waters, the ability to add another gear beyond a three-knot pace is needed.

SECOND GEAR Suppose, a newer kayaker only capable of paddling three knots (first gear) takes a short one-mile journey to a coastal bay entrance. Once arriving at the entrance, they spend time enjoying sights while having a bite to eat. After taking in the scenery, they decide to return home and find the tide has changed and the current has started to run against them at 2.5 knots, this slows their forward progress to .5 knots. During the now two-hour return trip, fatigue will most likely cause their pace to slow; what was once a relaxing journey becomes an improbable task.

Had this individual embarked on the trip with the ability to attain a second gear pace of even four knots, this scenario could have turned out quite different, forward progress would now be 1.5 knots and the return trip would now take 45 minutes. Adding a second gear is essential when paddling against current or wind, significantly reducing paddling time.

THIRD GEAR For paddlers with interest in activities such as tide races, surfing and rock gardening, the ability to quickly accelerate for a short period is necessary. Third gear will require a powerful high cadence stroke, quickly accelerating the kayak up to speed. This pace is not meant to be sustainable for long periods unless the goal is to become an Olympic sprinter.

A few quick strokes to drive across an eddy line may be all it takes to access a tide race. Or in the case of coastal paddling, there will undoubtedly be times when launching through surf will be needed. During a surf launch, a paddler will find quickly accelerating the kayak up to speed is required to compensate for the energy of oncoming ocean waves. A short burst of power between waves can be all it takes to avoid being pushed back toward the beach, in some cases preventing a capsize. To counteract the opposing wave energy, forward momentum greater than the wave's force is needed, the bigger the wave, the more power required. Having a third gear will significantly improve access to dynamic water play.

For those whose ultimate goal is to have fun surfing or playing in rock gardens, the ability to accelerate and match wave/water speed, possibly over five knots, is a necessity. Quickly getting up to

Top tip‌ If paddling in dynamic water is a goal, doing some regular forward sprints while out kayaking will help improve acceleration.

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Bill is an ACA Advanced Coastal Kayaking Coach and owner of Pacific Coastal Kayaking.

Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, he is now based out of Portland, Oregon and runs classes along the US west coast from Oregon to Baja, California. http://pacificcoastalkayaking.com/ speed is necessary for catching that perfect wave you have been waiting for all day. When rock gardening, matching the water’s speed is needed as it flows over or through the rocks. Falling behind the surge can potentially leave a paddler sitting on bare rock as the water withdraws in front of the next wave, not a good place to be.

FITNESS Becoming a better paddler is an excellent motivation for increasing fitness, and being fit can increase confidence.

Having physical reserves to draw upon is essential to meet environmental challenges while paddling. For many, with busy schedules paddling every day as fitness is not an option, some regular exercise is needed.

Doing something as simple as a brisk walk and a few pushups whenever time allows can significantly improve paddling stamina. Often during paddling, extra power is only needed for a short time. Finding time to get exercise can make a big difference when revving up to a higher gear is necessary.

When I get out for a hike, bike ride or just a walk, I will try and find times to push my heart rate up a bit, telling myself this will make next weekend’s surf session more enjoyable and safer if I have more energy in the tank.

TECHNIQUE Along with fitness, good technique is needed to transfer power from paddle to kayak, generating more performance with less effort. Classes were beneficial when I first started paddling, learning many things that I didn’t know. Instruction can help progress in the sport when accompanied by practising what is learned. Seek out a professional instructor with a background in racing or is highly experienced in the paddling you desire and benefit from their experience. Having both good technique and fitness will create an efficient forward stroke that can be used in any conditions.

SUPPORT Paddling in conditions is a team sport. Having a group able to assist and encourage each other when conditions get dicey is beneficial to all. This team approach gives support to all when pushing out of one’s comfort zone and can increase the whole group's ability level.

To be an asset to the team, paddlers need to move forward through wind and current with enough reserve to help their fellow kayakers in case assistance is required. Getting into position quickly to do a rescue in conditions requires boat control and a good forward stroke.

SUCK IT UP There will come a time while paddling where you will need to suck it up, dig in, and paddle harder than comfortable. With time and practice, you will be ready to step it up when more gears are needed.

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W A T C H I N G

WILDLIFE from the kayak seat

Words and photos: Rupert Kirkwood For the last fifteen years, I have paddled around Devon and Cornwall’s coast, observing and photographing its fantastic wildlife.

Occasionally further afield: the west coast of Scotland and the Outer Isles, France, Spain, Greenland, USA, Mexico, Chile and Antarctica.These places are great for kayaking and have provided some exceptional wildlife moments, but I have always been a great fan of my home patch, and what you can see by just churning out the miles. So my most memorable and fulfilling paddling adventures have been right here in southwest England.

I have always had a passion for natural history, and kayaks have always been my main sporting and recreational interest. First messing about on the River Thames, then a short spell of marathon racing, and a couple of decades of waveski surfing in north Cornwall whenever I had some time off from a busy schedule as a farm vet in west Devon.

Sit-on-top (SOT) kayaks appeared on the scene at precisely the right time. I was starting to get fed up with how crowded the waves were becoming with surfers, so was contemplating a change to coastal touring. But I hesitated to purchase a sit-in sea kayak because of the worry of tipping over. I had been shaken by a nasty incident where I was trapped upside down in boiling surf on my waveski, unable to find the quick release on a seatbelt which had become twisted. As a result, I eventually managed to roll up, ditched wearing a seatbelt and became a convert to the SOT principle. Easy self-rescue, safety, simplicity and freedom of movement.

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So I bought one of of the first Ocean Kayak Malibu 2s to arrive in the UK. Nothing much more than a flat boat-shaped piece of plastic, but fantastic for short worry-free coastal trips, surfing, fishing, and real family fun.

I progressed onto a series of single SOTs: Ocean Kayak Prowler 15, Ocean Kayak Scupper Pro, Wilderness Tarpon 160. I was always looking for that compromise of comfort, speed, load-carrying for camping, and suitability for fishing. I became a very enthusiastic kayak fisherman.Trolling a lure whilst paddling along quietly just made an enjoyable pastime even more exciting.

Whilst piecing together the whole of the southwest coast, I caught over 25 species of fish.

The first sensational monsters I came across were a couple of Basking Sharks at Land’s End. I just sat gaping in amazement at their colossal size, with the top of their fins level

with my eyeballs

I also clocked up a lot of miles, 1,155 to be precise, between Poole and Minehead.This includes paddling up every creek as far as I could go at high tide, and out to all the islands. It’s 630 miles if you walk the coast.

I was delighted to complete the three ‘big’ open sea crossings in southwest England, in recreational SOT kayaks. Eddystone and Lundy there-and-back, and Scilly (featuring Leatherback Turtle!) one way, were all about 30 miles. What SOT kayaks lacked in speed, they made up for in comfort.

CATCHING FISH FOR FUN My kayak-fishing era came to an end when the threats facing all creatures that lived in the sea were starting to become evident. Catching fish for fun (because I am not particularly fond of eating fish) didn’t sit comfortably with my lifelong appreciation and respect for nature, even though the vast majority were released unharmed.

So I swapped my fishing rod for a camera. And if somebody had given me a list of all the incredible animals I was going to see in the dozen or so years since then, I would have rolled my eyes in disbelief.

My fascination for marine megafauna was sparked by an encounter with Fungie the Dingle Dolphin, from my waveski, 30 years ago. Still, I didn’t get going with dolphins and their fellow-creatures again until recently.

The first sensational monsters I came across were a couple of Basking Sharks at Land’s End. I just sat gaping in amazement at their colossal size, with the top of their fins level with my eyeballs. Far, far longer than my kayak, and twice as wide. They kept on circling round and round with me in the centre, no doubt checking out whether I was a fellow shark. One misjudged its depth as it passed underneath my hull and momentarily heaved my kayak out of the water.

I enjoyed several years of frequent basking shark encounters around Cornwall (and a few in Devon) until 2013, but since then their annual appearance in late spring seems to have more or less stopped.

The only way I would see one was by paddling as far offshore as possible, as often as possible.

Finding a whale is like looking for a (very large) needle in a (very, very large) haystack.

CHOICE OF BOAT I was always on the lookout for a narrower and faster SOT kayak that would make offshore paddling a bit more practical. I snapped up a second-hand, supremely cool-looking, South African-made Paddleyak Swift, a great craft and suitable for notching up the miles, but not comfortable enough to spend all day in the seat.

No backrest.

Next came a Cobra Expedition, 18-foot long and 23 inches wide, a superb and narrow SOT that was roomy enough for multi-day camping expeditions, and capable of tackling some serious stuff as paddling around St.Kilda solo. (Not my most relaxing paddle ever).

My current craft is an RTM Disco SOT. I have nosed past my 60th birthday and have to look after my back when lugging a kayak. The Disco is light, reasonably fast, sleek, and, now I have glued four layers of a camping mat to the seat well, very comfortable. Good enough for an all-day trip.

SHELTERED CREEK My initial exploration in search of wildlife was close inshore and up the hundreds of miles of sheltered creek in southwest England. As a lifelong ornithologist, it was always thrilling to hear the piping of Redshank and Greenshank echoing around the wooded valleys during a winter trip or the turquoise flash of a Kingfisher. Less frequent were the sightings of foxes, deer, and once even a badger, swimming across the tidal creeks.

Early-morning trips down the Tamar, Taw and Torridge were rarely without a sighting of an otter, and I have even come across the occasional, unofficial, beaver.

In 2015 I decided I wanted to see a whale from my kayak. I knew this was a bit of a crazy target, as I had only heard of whales being seen on a few occasions, by fast boats which can eat up the miles – never from a kayak.

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Offshore paddling My offshore jaunts were and still are, always thrilling. I never know what nugget of nature will appear in front of me next. But paddling around in the open sea is not every kayaker’s idea of a great day out. It is a bit light on scenery, cream tea shops are few and far between, and there is no chance of getting out to ease that aching back. So unless you are a really serious wildlife enthusiast, and are happy to take the risk of seeing nothing at all for the entire day, stick closer to shore.

However, for me, the excitement of offshore wildlife encounters from the kayak cannot be overstated.

Unlike creatures on land or along the coast, animals of the open sea are not wary of insignificant humans sitting on unfeasibly flimsy craft. Quite the opposite, a kayak acts as a magnet to virtually all passing fauna, because anything that breaks up the monotony of the sea surface generally means fish. Gannets circle overhead, dolphins are inherently curious, and even Puffins were sitting on the surface paddle over to have a look. In the Antarctic, last February, an inquisitive juvenile Humpback Whale escorted by its mother swam around our posse of kayaks for ten minutes, often on its back, before surfacing a few feet away from my wife and myself in our double (sit-in!) kayak and soaking us with the spray from its blow.

There is no worry about causing a disturbance when far out to sea when you are paddling along at three knots with hardly a splash. If a dolphin takes a dislike to you, one flick of its tail and it is gone. The disturbance is a developing issue along the coast, with an increasing number of kayaks and SUPs harassing seals and sometimes inshore pods of dolphins. But not in the same league as jetskis, of course.

PORPOISES AND DOLPHINS Porpoises are the cetaceans I observe most often.

Very small and very aloof and difficult to see unless it is calm. Charming little creatures nonetheless. In whaling days they were called ‘puffing pigs’ because they breathe with quite a sharp blast, that can be heard from long distance.

Common Dolphins are my absolute favourite and seem to be increasing in numbers. They are splashy, dynamic, charismatic and very social. As I cautiously approach a pod, a couple of bulky ‘bouncers’ come over to check that I do not represent a threat (such as an Orca), before the rest of the gang joins in the fun.

Adults were sensible, adolescents were leaping about all over the place, and calves stuck to their mother’s side like glue.

Common Dolphins are by far the most numerous dolphins, and I come across them about 20 times a year, followed by Bottlenose once or twice a year, the extraordinary Rissos maybe once a year, and finally White-beaked Dolphins that I have only seen once.

FIRST WHALES My first whales were during summer trips to Eddystone lighthouse, 12 miles beyond Plymouth breakwater. During quite a lumpy crossing, I just happened to glance around behind me as the long

back of a juvenile Minke Whale surfaced. A view of about a second, and then it was gone, and I didn’t see it again. But what the heck, it was my first whale!

A month later, I had the most sensational prolonged viewing of another Minke, this time, a full-sized adult, close to the Eddystone reef. It was such a thrill to be sitting far, far offshore, in glass calm conditions, no other human within sight, shearwaters zipping past, porpoises puffing and every so often the great blast of a surfacing whale that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. In my view, the most evocative of all the sounds of the animal kingdom.

BIG DAY AT EDDYSTONE As usual, I was bursting with excitement as I paddled out from Plymouth sound towards Eddystone in early August this year. This is the time of year when cetaceans reach their peak numbers, feeding on the seasonal boom in shoaling fish such as sandeels and mackerel.

It was the first day of light winds for weeks, and the surface was as calm as it gets. I had passed a pod of porpoises and dolphins before the sun had come up. Three miles offshore, there was an explosion of water behind me. Not the benign splash of dolphins, or the slap of a breaching sunfish, but a ripping noise that made me crank my neck around in an instant. An area of the sea the size of half a football pitch was being churned up by a load of enormous fish whose spiky fins were raking the surface. With an occasional one, the size of a dolphin, jumping clear. Giant Bluefin Tuna!

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This was not the first time I had seen these fantastic fish, but I had never seen them in this sort of quantity because for the next hour hardly a minute went past without another explosion of water somewhere within earshot. I saw up to a hundred tuna appear at the surface; there must have been many thousands more underwater – who would ever believe that – and all within sight of Plymouth?

The action didn’t stop there. I heard sploshing of tuna, porpoises and dolphins all the way out to the lighthouse, complemented by a couple of Sunfish and a Blue Shark at the surface.

And on the way back three different Minke whales sliding through the water like enormous porpoises, accompanied by that giant puff of air.

THE DAY OF THE HUMPBACK

Unquestionably my most remarkable offshore wildlife day was in early August 2019. It becomes more unbelievable as time goes on. I still can’t believe that I happened to be in EXACTLY the right place, at EXACTLY the right time, to see one of the most dramatic sights witnessed in recent times off the Cornish coast.

I had paddled out from Penzance four hours previously, and was three miles off the

e coast, just following my nose. I suddenly found myself in a frenzy of activity – I could see bait balls of sandeels swirling below my kayak as porpoises, dolphins and tuna herded them into a more convenient tight ball for a decent mouthful. Shearwaters and Gannets milled about overhead. As I enjoyed the show while browsing on a chocolatey snack, I kept thinking I could hear a prolonged blow from further towards Lands End. I was a bit reluctant to paddle further, because the big Spring tides were already dragging me down the coast at over a knot, giving me a long paddle back.

However, when I saw, half a mile away, a giant grey back launched upwards and fell back with a monumental splash, I was off to investigate at top speed. It emerged again much closer, and I cautiously paddled up to where the disturbed water was still fizzing with bubbles.

The whale lunged out again nearby, a school of sprats scattering as they tried to avoid being engulfed, and then everything went completely quiet. Until little fish started jumping out of the water around my kayak – Yikes, the Humpback was on the way up beneath me! Fortunately, it chose to eat a baitball a hundred yards away, not the one that was taking refuge beneath my hull.

It finished off the show by waving a gigantic white pectoral fin in the air and raising its mighty flukes for the last time, with St.Michaels Mount conveniently in the background for the perfectly ( and very luckily) composed photograph.

AND THEN IT WAS GONE This was a spectacle I will find hard to beat not least because I watched four species of cetacean (Humpback, Minke Whale, Porpoise and Common Dolphin) plus a few Giant Tuna while sitting in the same place in my kayak without paddling a stroke.

AROUND THE WORLD (SORT OF) Over the last 15 years, I have notched up well over 25,000 miles of paddling, so more than the circumference of the earth, and have seen various animals that I had no idea lived in UK waters, let alone that you can see from a kayak.

As I nudge a bit further into my sixties, my motivation to get out onto the water remains undimmed. A kayak is such a perfect platform for watching and photographing wildlife, uninterrupted

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tide running against the lightest wind will throw up a bit of a chop, and headlands magnify all the effects of wind, current and swell, and so I treat them with the utmost respect.

‘audio’ and causing a minimal disturbance with an unobstructed view. Maybe I will only see a few seals or hear a handful of excitable Oystercatchers, or perhaps I will see one of the stars at the top of my wish lists such as an Orca or Pilot Whale. The magic of the kayak does not fade!

SAFETY AND PLANNING I carry a lot of safety equipment because I frequently paddle solo: two phones, VHF radio, GPS (Garmin 72H), personal locator beacon, flares. I contact the local NCI (Coastwatch) station by phone or radio as I paddle out, with my approximate return time. But the key to safety is careful planning.

I make sure I know exactly what the wind, including gust forecast, is doing, using XC Weather and BBC weather forecasts.

I know precisely what the tide is doing, and the tidal coefficient (how big it is), using tides4fishing website.

Also what time the tidal flows change direction, which often doesn’t coincide with high or low water, especially along the south coast and at Land’s End. Finally, I like to know how much groundswell is running, particularly important when planning trips in north Cornwall or Devon.

I never cease to be amazed at how difficult it is to predict the sea state. For example, even the slightest

For me, an absolutely flat sea is the key to both enjoyment and wildlife watching. Glass calm means you can see the fins from a mile off, hear all the puffs and splashes. You can take photos in a relaxed manner from an excellent stable platform. And you can have an enjoyable lunch break with your legs dangling over the side of your kayak.

ESSENTIAL EQUIPMENT Paddle: I use a Werner Camano straight full carbon paddle.

No apologies for no expense spared! It’s your most important bit of kit.

Paddling suit: In the summer I wear wetsuit trousers and a light top.

For the rest of the year, I wear Reeds Chillcheater dry trousers and paddling top.

Camera: I use a Panasonic Lumix FZ2000 for scenes, wildlife and videos. It’s one of the best bridge cameras and has a 24-480mm lens. In good light, it produces images as good as a DSLR and is hugely more versatile.

However, it is entirely non-waterproof, so it lives in a dry bag until I see something exciting. Then I take it out, and it sits on my lap, and I hope it doesn’t get wet!

For underwater stuff, I use an Akaso V50 action camera (like a GoPro).

Roofrack: My Karitek ELRR roof rack that drops down low so that I only have to lift the kayak to waist height, has undoubtedly protected me from back and shoulder strain. If it prolongs my paddling career by a couple of years when I otherwise might have been stretched out on the physio’s bench, it is worth every penny!

The Blog All my adventures, encounters, pics and videos can be found on my blog: https://thelonekayaker.wordpress.com.

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FreeStyle canoeing – it’s not just all about the

SONG DANCE A N D

But on the other hand…

Using music to help unleash your paddling skills Words: Bruce Kemp, with contributions from Paul Klonowski, Marc Ornstein, Bob/Elaine Mravetz Photos: Bruce Kemp, Jim Lewis, Rick Lalonde, Marc Ornstein I first became aware of FreeStyle by seeing some performances of paddling routines that had been choreographed to music, aka Interpretive FreeStyle or ‘canoe dancing’. While I had no real interest in the performance aspect, I surely wanted to learn how to handle a canoe and those folks. After my first symposium a dozen or so years ago, I quickly discovered that the manoeuvres and techniques I was learning had a significant and positive effect on my ‘everyday paddling back home’, as we sometimes phrase it.

It is common for newcomers to FreeStyle (myself included, back in the day) to find their Instructor reminding them frequently to slow down. Relax.

Don’t paddle so hard. FreeStyle is a body of technique which emphasizes efficient paddling, in this case meaning conserving the physical energy of the paddler by making use of a selection of paddle placements, blade angles, canoe heel and pitch, in various combinations to harness and direct the boat’s own momentum such that it may be used to augment a paddler’s power.

As my FreeStyle instruction progressed, I unexpectedly discovered something else too – that paddling to music can be an effective and useful practice tool. I don’t mean creating and paddling an interpretive routine, necessarily, but rather just paddling along to the music playing in the background, just as you might have music on around home or at your workplace. I suggest that you give it a try when you’re out for a leisurely hour or so on a local lake or pond, or just generally practising your boat control somewhere, and will describe some ways that it can be helpful.

To be sure, there are certainly paddling situations when a paddler needs to pour on the gas – to duck into an eddy on a fast-moving stream, or power through a tricky spot on some churning rapids. But unless you are a hard-core whitewater paddler or a racer of course, then most of the time full-out power is not necessary, and more often than not may be counter-productive. A controlled and relaxed cadence will do just fine and is in fact, preferable for the long haul (see Marc Ornstein’s Cross Post article ‘Slow and Steady’ for more http://freestylecanoeing.com/slow-and-steady/).

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Paddling along with some slow-ish to moderate tempo music can be a useful exercise to help slow down your ‘running’ cadence and contribute to developing a relaxed pattern of rhythmic paddling that can be maintained for an extended period.When paddling to a piece of favourite music, you tend to become immersed in it, and VOILA! One tends to fall naturally into its rhythms, and strokes begin to follow the music's tempo.They become smooth, easy, unhurried, with consistent power and recovery, and you find your boat gliding almost effortlessly.

When my wife Anita and I first started FreeStyle lessons, beginning in solo canoes and then a little later in tandem, there were times when our Instructors would take some class time to have the students do ‘linkages’ – that is, combine two or three FreeStyle manoeuvres into one paddling sequence. Paddle out and do an axle, say, then come back and do a post.

And then, well you choose what move you will do as a third element of the sequence.This exercise helped us to become more aware of the ‘aftermath’, as you might say, of each manoeuvre.

At its conclusion, where is your paddle? Where is the canoe pointing? In what direction is the canoe’s momentum tending? And given all that, what might be a logical and efficient choice for another move, either forward or reverse?

Paddling along with music can help a lot to spark your awareness of every manoeuvre you do, where it will go, where it will end up, and when it’ll get there. If you know the song well enough, you can anticipate what you know is coming up next and choose what might be a good move to execute during that high note the singer will hold for a measure or two or that instrumental bridge. A sort of ‘let’s try this and see how it fits’ approach.

Informal practice and experimentation with a musical background can go a long way towards helping you put together smoother linkages and opening your imagination to possibilities, alternate selections of what you might do next. What you might like to do, or what you might need to do out on a river somewhere. All the while keeping in mind the canoe’s movement and momentum and how you might make some use of that and work with it right here and right now.

All of this goes double, if you forgive that choice of phrase, for tandem paddlers. Much of tandem paddling depends on the teamwork between the bow paddler and the stern paddler; the two realize that they are indeed a team and should paddle like one.

The bow paddler handled the bow, the stern paddler following the bow, and handled the boat. That teamwork, that concept, is fundamental.

And for tandem paddlers, paddling to music helps a lot with developing that whole teamwork thing. It fosters the smooth and rhythmic cadence mentioned earlier and nurtures the concept of paddling in sync with each other, which contributes so much to efficient and effective tandem paddling. For the stern paddler, in particular, it helps develop a sensitivity to the bow paddler’s actions. Not just with syncing, but also in learning to recognize subtle cues as to what the bow paddler is about to do, an anticipation of what s/he is likely to do in a given situation, and then being ready to respond with the stern in whatever way will be appropriate to enhance/facilitate the successful execution of the manoeuvre. When that happens right, it’s a joy.

PADDLING TO MUSIC HAS A GOAL: l

l

l

l

l

To foster a relaxed and undisturbed session with just you and the canoe (or two of you and the canoe, if that applies), a chance to get into the zone and shut the rest out.

To improve your overall familiarity with the tools and techniques of FreeStyle.

To practice, as you might say, the language of paddling. The vocabulary, the syntax, the grammar and idioms of that conversation between you and the boat.

To begin to be more ‘fluent’ in that language, more intuitive with your paddling.

To move more towards it’s all just being natural.

If you’d like to give this a try, then you’ll need to get together a playlist of songs you like – any kind, any length, any genre – just stuff you like. Please put it on your phone or an mp3 player (and yes, there are small drybag-like pouches commonly available made specifically to protect such devices while you’re on the water, but I bet you knew that already). Collect maybe 45 minutes’ worth or so of slow to moderate tempo stuff (waltz time songs are a good choice too – ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’ perhaps not so much). Turn on, plug in, and paddle out.

And if you’ve stuck with me this far, and after a few practice sessions with music on your own, I have one final suggestion for your consideration. Try putting a routine together. Not with the idea that you will ever perform it in front of an audience of even just one.

Ever! Do it just for yourself. Pick out an ‘appropriate’ piece of music (however you may define that) three or four minutes long, and take it out on the water and try paddling some manoeuvres along with it. Explore some possible linkages, in time with the music’s beat, and keeping in mind the songs’ natural divisions and dynamics. You may just find, as we did, that Interpretive FreeStyle is both rewarding and a whole lot of fun.

I mentioned at the start that some folks refer to Interpretive FreeStyle as ‘canoe dancing’. You will have seen the bumper sticker that says, “You can dance with the river, but you have to know the steps.” Practice with music can help you learn those steps so that you and your canoe will be better partners when you next dance with the river.

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M U S I C

A N D

PADDLING G O H A N D - I N - H A N D !

Interview by Zack Teperman Breakout music star Joylissa is known for her hit songs - such as her latest single entitled HOME – but beyond the music, she is all about exploring the planet and paddling.

Since she was young her parents would take her out camping, canoeing, kayaking and more, which blossomed into a love of adventure and the water.

We had an exclusive one-on-one chat with the rising music star and how music and paddling go hand-in-hand for her!

Why is paddling and being out on the water/outdoors so important to you and your mindset as a person and musician?

Growing up my parents often took us camping, canoeing, kayaking, hiking. I learned to appreciate the peace that comes from being out on the water in nature at a young age. The world can shout at you from all directions but when you’re in nature, the shouting stops and you can finally hear what your soul needs. I need that peace as an artist to get past the layer of the superficial and get to the core.

When was the first time you paddled out on the water?

Some of my earliest memories are of my dad tying our seventeen foot red canoe to the top of our minivan and heading out to the lake for the weekend. We would head up there 2-5 times a summer to fish and explore the lake!

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As a musician, do you ever write or think of songs while out on the water paddling?

I often get my best ideas for songs while out on still water. When the world is still, my mind is still and I reflect on some of my most personal thoughts.

What is your favourite song to listen to while out on the water, or that is about being out on the water?

I often prefer not to listen to music when I’m out on the water. I like to be present in nature when I have the chance to get away from the busyness of life.

One of my favourite songs about water is ‘Swallowed in the Sea’ by Coldplay. That’s one of those songs that I listened to on repeat in high school!

What are some of your favourite lakes or places you have adventured and explored?

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, my family often vacationed near Lake Chatcolet and Lake Coeur D'alene in Idaho. In my opinion, this is one of the most beautiful places in the United States!

Do you prefer paddling in a canoe or kayak, and why?

As an adult I find that I enjoy kayaking more because of the independence of paddling my own boat as well the design that allows for quick maneuvering but as a child, I loved going out on the canoe with my parents and two older siblings. There was something so heartwarming about packing a family of five into a canoe and experiencing everything together… especially having to work together not to tip over!

Any fun or interesting paddling stories you can share? Any neat adventures you've been on?

As I mentioned before, one of my favourite memories is strapping the seventeen food canoe to our minivan and then taking it out on Lake Chatcolet. We would paddle to the swimming hole with the rope that swung us out over the lake, and find the best fishing spots to catch dinner!

Where is one place you want to still explore most?

I would love to explore the San Juan Islands more.

Though I grew up in Washington state, I lived on the opposite side of the state so I wasn’t able to visit the coast as often as I would have liked. The small amount of time i have spent kayaking there, I found it to be absolutely gorgeous!

What new projects for the rest of 2020 and into 2021 are you working on professionally?

I just released my song ‘Home’ and plan on releasing a few more before my full EP comes out early next year.This also includes a song I wrote entitled ‘Holding Me’ with a line ‘I’m a little row boat in a hurricane.’ It’s an introspective song that reflects on how life can be like being out on the water. Sometimes it can be the most comforting place in the world and other times it can be the most terrifying!

ThePADDLER 129

ThePADDLER 130

Upper River

NORE

BLUEWAY

(‘U R NB’)

Words: John Campion Photos: Robert Carroll Someone told me that stage 1 of Covid lockdown was making banana bread.

Stage 2 was making sourdough apparently, but stage 3 was a dip in the sea or local river! The mental wellbeing that it brought was to work wonders! From growing up in Errill, Laois and swimming as a kid in local spots like Cullohill or Castletown, I remembered the sensation of the cold dip but now a bit older, with kids of my own, I was looking to get back there but maybe see what it like from a kayaking perspective.

My cousin, Padraig Bree from Abbeyleix, had always spoken about a beautiful stretch of the Nore from Castletown right down to the Dunmore Demesne outside Durrow. He had kayaked it himself many years previously and again in 2019, and while he stressed the river was now a bit choked up in places, it sounded like a magical experience.

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He relayed this experience to several people. Soon enough, he had Robert Carroll of Borris-in-Ossory, myself and my 14-year-old son Eoin enchanted enough with his stories and pictures to agree on meeting up at the Castletown weir on July 28th. Not having a double kayak of my own, Michael Gee Phelan in Ballacolla very generously offered Eoin and me one of his kayaks. Together with the more experienced Padraig and Robert, we pushed off from the grassy banks. Very quickly we realised we had happened upon a hidden gem here in Laois. I’m sure others have known about it for years, but it just hadn’t reached our ears.

A NORE DUNKING While the plan was definitely to stay afloat for the full 24-kilometre stretch, Eoin and I had different interpretations of me shouting, “Paddle left” or “paddle right,” so needless to say we took a Nore dunking a few times. However, with helmets and buoyancy aids, we stayed safe and righted ourselves quickly again.

Other than the noise of my ‘helpful’ parental instruction and oars gliding through the water, the peace and tranquillity were everything Padraig had promised.The river brings you through areas and landscapes you never see from the roads or bridges we had driven on for years.The birdlife was a real surprise and quite

floated underneath. However, Poormans Bridge in Shanahoe – another seven-arch limestone road bridge – probably lording it over the others not just in dating back to c.1770, and with triangular cutwaters but boasting historically that the legendary beggar man ‘An Beal Bocht’ lived here.

Poormans Bridge also happened to be our halfway point with the homeward leg bringing us through the majestic mature woodlands of De Vesci estate and along the Leafy Loop walk banks in Dunmore Demesne.

spectacular along the way with the grey wagtail’s beautiful yellow darts.There were also colonies of sand martins exiting and entering their tunnelled nests and blue flashes of the kingfisher welcoming us as we would turn around another river bend.

Gordon Coffey, who helped with taxiing us on the day, had also reliably informed us that, as a keenangler, it was thankfully well stocked with fish and a salmon run in places. It was also a known stretch for the important freshwater pearl mussel – a fascinating creature that is only found in near-pristine freshwater habitats – and is capable of surviving for up to 140 years, thereby making them Ireland’s longest living animal. With the importance of this habitat; therefore, for a myriad of creatures, we were mindful of maintaining this ecosystem and thoroughly enjoying the journey as we passed through.

RAW BEAUTY AND ENJOYMENT Over the years and as mentioned in other parts of the country, it was clear that the river wasn’t as managed as it possibly was in the past. While this created challenges for us kayakers, it also added to the day’s raw beauty and enjoyment. The vigorous growing willow, ash and hazel in places made for quite difficult passage with some areas completely impassable without getting out and lifting the boats over trees which had fallen in storms and now blocked the entire width of the Nore River. Low hanging branches tested the strength of our helmets like an old fashioned junior B cornerback in Ireland's traditional game of hurling!

While exiting at Dunmore after 24kms had been both exhilarating and tiring, in truth, there were few other natural points at which we could have left for fear of either damaging the river banks, entering private lands or being too far away from a road or laneway. We’re sure better local knowledge would probably have pointed to some areas we had paddled past.

OBJECTIVE Our core objective is to make the river safer and more accessible for travel bringing its mostly hidden beauty and wild character to the community both locally and beyond. Therefore, we are engaging with like-minded people who support such a sustainable, eco-friendly activity and potentially raise it to a Blueway status. While the Greenway status is much in the news these days, the lesser-known Blueways are a network of formally recognised multi-activity recreational trails, based on or alongside idyllic lakes, canals and rivers. Approval has already been given to the nearby River Erkina Blueway between Boston Bridge and Durrow following great work by the Woodenbridge Paddlers Group.

The Nore’s uniqueness is that it is exceptionally rich in biodiversity as it has been left relatively untouched.

Therefore, any clearance of trees and vegetation would be guided by an appropriate assessment and an environmental impact study.

Unfortunately, these blockages also acted as a barrier for plastic debris coming downstream or wooden fence stakes than had fallen from the riverbank. It also meant for reading changes in the river current, and thankfully, with the guidance of Robert and Padraig, we made it through these obstacles safely.

It’s hard to keep count, but apparently, we went under about 12 bridges of different sizes and shapes and purposes. We all would have driven over these bridges numerous times, including the M8 motorway bridge being one such structure – seeing their craftmanship from a completely different angle made you appreciate their history even more. Whether it be Lady’s Bridge, Waterloo Bridge or the seven-arch limestone Kilbricken Bridge is dating back to c1800 each has a story to tell and sound of its own as we’d

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On September 1st, nine more kayakers, mainly friends from the west of Ireland (during a less restrictive lockdown period than we have now), could join us.

environmental impact survey, discussion with local landowners, engagement and dialogue with local community groups and sporting and angling clubs.

While we didn’t go the full length again, we spotted an exit on the Ballacolla Road near Waterloo Bridge.

They were of varied age, experience and ability. Still, in grabbing a bite back in the hotel they were staying in Abbeyleix later, all had their own stories and experiences from the day and felt they had definitely gotten a greater appreciation for the land snuggled away between the distant roaring traffic on the M7 and M8 motorways on either side of this rural landscape.

With mental wellbeing being more critical now possibly than ever before as we all struggle under different lockdown pressures, it was no surprise that the acronym of 'U R NB' for the Upper River Nore Blueway turned into more of a motto for us than merely enjoying a paddle down a rural river in our home county.

ELEVATED BLUEWAY STATUS As noted already, a lot of consideration still needs to be taken into account to progress the dream of turning this stretch of the Upper Nore into the elevated Blueway status and strict criteria must be met (as available to see on the Blueway website application). Core to this is an independent

SOCIAL MEDIA REQUEST It also led to a social media request for locals from Durrow, Abbeyleix, and Castletown to join our Upper River Nore Blueway (https://www.facebook.com/TheURNB) Facebook page and register their interest and thoughts on the subject. It has been encouragingly positive to date. It is so important that the wider community here in Laois knows what’s on their very doorstep and ensures that any actions align with their wishes and interests.

a weight lifted. lighter on the body. and the mind.

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