This chair is still in the test stage but expect it out soon!*

 *This is a joke, it’s the seat from my Ammo!

Thanks to Woodie for the photos

Friday night I was invited to a BBQ hosted by some of the members Leamington Canoe Club, at which I drank some great homemade gin and told many stories from my recent travels.
The weekend was the big demo day at Brookbank Warwickshire, a chance to try out all the boats and decide the right one for you. It was amazingly sunny with a really good, chilled out atmosphere. Chris Eastabrook coaching was running hour long drop in sessions and the stand was promoting next summers destinations.

‘Monkey’ manning the stand!

With all that excitement over, all I have to look forward to is exams, apart from a sneaky little paddle on Tuesday and possibly Wednesday!

For a more detailed trip write up please follow this link.

Over the 6 days the instructors and I answered a wide range of questions from nearly 50 students representing universities from all over the UK. Examples of such questions were as followed; how do I safety perform a live bait rescue? As a female leader how do I get over keen lads to listen? And how do I grow such impressive facial hair?

The courses were held in Scotland in the Fort William area, and in keeping with tradition there was little water around so venues such as the Leven, Spean Gorge, Arkaig and Pattack were used to do some practical learning!

The next big push with the Student Safety Initiative is the weekend at PYB in Wales in October, dates and booking information to be released soon. In addition to this, with sufficient interest, a supplementary Alpine leadership day will be laid on in the French Alps around the 16th June, for more information drop me an email!

For more photos click here!

Club night pool session on Monday finally saw ‘Beverly’ the Rev get some action.  Having paddled the Medium pre production Rev I was excited about this new boat but I found myself getting nervous as to whether all the features in the M would transfer down to the S.  First impressions were very good, it was slicey through the water - making ends effortlessly.  She was stable on her both the bow and stern, giving me a good platform to launch some loops from, so far so good.

Being completely snowed under with work, I did the typical student thing, sacked it all in and went boating.  There is a small wave-hole combination not far from Warwick University (about an hour) and within 10minutes of deciding not to do any work I managed to round up 2 of my housemates to join in the fun.

The sun was shinning bright and wave was looking really fast - this would be a good test to see if the Rev would live up to all the hype about its new found speed.  It did not disappoint!  One had to work hard to stay on the wave, but it seemed quick and the edges released just as quickly to switch direction carving across the face of the wave.  I was suitably impressed with the bounce I could get from the boat and pulled some fairly high blunts for a relatively small wave and flushy conditions.

The real test will be some Rodeo training down at Nene & HPP in the coming weeks for the main event; we shall see how she gets on.

‘Beverly’  -  Photo’s taken by Nicky!

My Amazing Housemates!

I did however get a good run down the Coe, which was new and exciting for me. The gorge is a great section of hold on to your hat style of boating and some new moves to be made. I also got out onto many of the classics such as the Orchy, Etive, Alt Muheuran & Roy Gorge and were all most enjoyable.

Some interesting footage was taken during the week with a special Blues Brothers meets boating short film coming soon!

In other news, the Evening of Extravagant Tales from Across the Globe took place last week and was a big success, thanks to everyone for attending hope you enjoyed yourself!

I had something useful to say for once!

Flat 26 Tocil, around the back of the Sport centre has seen a normal week pass by, well normal for a uni student.
The flat has outfitted two boats - a G-force & a M Burn, been out to a messy canoe social, attended 2 pool sessions, pulled some moves and got cold at HPP, came down with a case of the Trent trotts afterwards, drive to Betws for the day and hucked some meat, done some work, hung out with other university clubs and finally enjoyed 6 flat evening dinners together. One has a lot to smile about!