Shropshire Paddlesport Blog

Not withstanding the last post…

There are some other - non hasler - races that club members might be interested in which are achievable although they would probably need some training for.

The first is the Ross Warland Memorial Canal Challenge which takes place on November 30th. It is a 20 mile winter race on the Oxford Canal near Banbury which can be done individually or as a relay. It is an out and back race with 6 portages in each direction. The classes are

· K1 full distance (20 miles)
· K2 full distance (20 miles).
· K1 relay teams. No more than 4 paddlers per team.
· K2 relay teams. Two pairs per team.
· Note: paddlers under 16 years of age may compete only as part of relay teams.

Then there are the Watersides and Thamesides etc.
There are a little further away (Wiltshire/Berkshire) but are quite fun - especially Waterside A which last year attracted so many paddlers that next year it will be pre-booking only and limited to only 400 paddlers.

Waterside A 15th February 2009 Great Bedwyn to Newbury 13.5 miles 21 portages
Thameside 1 22nd February 2009 Aldermaston to Caversham 12 miles 13 portages
Waterside B 1st March 2009 Newbury to Aldermaston & Back 17.5 miles 19 portages
Thameside 2 8th March 2009 Caversham to Marlow 19 miles 8 portages
Waterside C 15th March 2009 Pewsey to Newbury 23 miles 35 portages
Royal 22nd March 2009 Runnymead to Teddington 19 miles 8 portages
Waterside D 29th March 2009 Devizes to Newbury 34 miles 35 portages

The countryside for these races is stunning - and yes, you do have time to look at it!

Lots and lots of juniors do them, and a fair few seniors do too as training for the DW. They are a good set of races in their own right whether you are interested in doing the DW.
If you want more information, give me a shout!

I’m very aware that this is very marathon dominated at the moment. That’s mostly because the only people who have requested posting rights are me and Andy. We know stuff about marathon but aren’t really qualified to talk about what is going on in other disciplines.

However, if you don’t want to post things yourself - especially if its a news item, give us an e-mail and we’ll bang it up here.

Otherwise, please come and join us on here - its lonely there just being the two of us - and if we don’t get some company it becomes the kind of conversation we have at home and we may end up discussing which of us has fed the cat today…

The dates for the sprint regattas have now been published. They are:

4-5 April
9-10 May
6-7 Jun
4-5 July
5-6 September

Don’t forget that the club is running two “come and try it” events this Saturday afternoon (26th July). If you have friends or family you think might like to come and see what this paddling thing is all about then for £5 a head they can come and have a go.

There are two sessions - 1 ’till 3 and 3 ’till 5. The weather forecast looks great for a warm and sunny afternoon so put the word about and let Deb or Andy know if you have any takers.

As you may have noticed the shed has new padlocks. Keys are in the process of being distributed to all the nominated keyholders (thank you Joe).

Can we just remind people that if you’re the last keyholder to leave it’s your responsibility to ensure that all the padlocks are secure. This includes the one on the toilet - there have been a couple of instances of the combination lock for the toilet “going missing” recently which, we assume, is due to it being left unfastened. Not only does this mean that we need to replace the padlock, it also means that the toilet gets used by boaters & fishermen who, to be honest, leave it in an unpleasant state.

On Saturday afternoon we had a girly trip to the river. Choosing the first weekend of the school holidays, in hindsight, wasn’t the best idea but three of us were able to make it.

Stacey, Ellie and I played on the river leaving Dave B to watch the cricket at the County Ground.

The three of us spent a couple of hours sprinting between the English and Welsh bridges perfecting our wash hanging and moving from a point of “I don’t like you that near my boat, its scary” to happily clashing paddles and running into each other. We had some fun with Ellie in the world’s most wobbly boat and Stacey in the blue espada with rudder cables which resembled overcooked spaghetti making any kind of directional control difficult!

Passing under the footbridge by the Boat House an bunch of passers-by started to cheer us on, shouting and encouraging the blue boat, the yellow boat, the red boat in turn.

Having got the wash hanging thing sorted we started to work as a team, rotating the lead around the group after a long discussion about how it might work. Apart from the hard sprint for the person dropping back and round, it was very effective - and much easier than having to paddle on your own for the entire race!

On the way back we did some turns on wide rivers, because we’re dead good at 25 point turns on a canal which is only a couple of inches longer than the boat but turns in big spaces are somehow much harder.

Finally we returned to Frankwell for a quick change into dry clothing and a wander into town for the best ice cream in Shrewsbury at Bellini’s. Mmm blackberry, hazlenut, tiramissu, raspberry pavlova… what would you choose???

We had so much fun that we decided to do it all again some time. A date in August will be circulated by e-mail.

With the splashes of Soar Valley behind us and only the Nationals and/or the Hasler finals to go then the 2007/2008 racing season draws to a close, and what a good one it’s been. As we write this they are just finalising the club points but it looks as though Shropshire Paddlesport has come 3rd across the Midlands region and so we’re assured of our place at the Hasler finals.

Of course, what this means is that the start of the 2008/2009 season is rapidly approaching and so it’s time to start at least thinking about the racing calendar for August onwards. Below is a first cut of the list of Midlands regional races for next year.

At the moment only the first three races have confirmed dates - anything after Lincoln we’ve made an assumption will be the same weekend as last year, but that may well change !

There’s a lot of racing on this list, and clearly not everyone will be able (or want) to go to every race. As a club one of the reasons we were so successful this year was that we managed to put in at least an appearance at nearly every race across the season, and we just need to build on that next year.

We’re also very aware that with ever-rising fuel prices, a trip across the country (geographically Midlands is a very big region) is not a cheap day out, and so we’ve also made a note of how far it is to each of the races (from central Shrewsbury). We started to do some work this year with lift-sharing to help manage this cost (and to improve our ‘green’ credentials) and we could definitely get better at this next season.

Confirmed races:
10th August 2008 Ironbridge (42 miles rtn)
21st September 2008 Fladbury (150 miles rtn)
12th October Lincoln (260 miles rtn)

Other regional races (best guess based on last year’s dates)
????????? 2009 Gailey (64 miles rtn) n.b. last year was 13th April but that’s Easter weekend this year
19th April 2009 Anker Valley (120 miles rtn)
26th April 2009 Worcester (100 miles rtn)
10th May 2009 Royal Leamington Spa (150 miles rtn)
17th May 2009 Nottingham (170 miles rtn)
14th June 2009 Burton (114 miles rtn)
21st June 2009 Hereford (110 miles rtn)
28th June 2009 Shropshire Paddlesport (home !)
13th July 2009 Soar Valley (180 miles)

Watch this space for details