Shropshire Paddlesport Blog

Hopefully everyone will have seen the club email, but Karan’s funeral will be on Thursday 26 February, at 2:40pm, at the Shrewsbury Crematorium. The service will start at 2:40pm, so people need to be inside for then. No flowers, instead donations to Karan’s favourite charity, The Cinnamon Trust.

Anyone that knew Karan is welcome to attend. Richard has requested that people who are intending to attend  let him know by email to  youngmangonewest(at)hotmail.com so that they have some idea of numbers.

Just a reminder that the re-scheduled Shropshire Duathlon (which was originally due to be run on Saturday 7th January) is being run on SUNDAY Feb 22nd i.e. this Sunday coming.

Apart from the change of day from a Saturday to a Sunday, all arrangements were as before. All offers of help and assistance (for car parking, turn-marshalls etc) gratefully received - please contact Bruce Blackman (race organiser) or one of the other members of the committee if you wish to volunteer your services.

Otherwise now that it’s warmed up a bit, why not come along and give it a go - for the lower divisions it’s only 2 km running + 4 km paddlling + 1 km running. Apparently this isn’t very far at all (at least that’s what they told Phil Bevan and I when we were talked into trying it a couple of weeks ago…)

This year’s DW pre-race season got underway at the weekend with Waterside ‘A’ the first of the Waterside Series (an important race series in their own right). Waterside A is from Great Bedwyn to Newbury and covers 13.5 miles with 21 portages - effectively the second half of Day 1 for the DW 4-day event..

We were hoping for three teams from our club but Phil and Alice weren’t able to start (after Phil injured himself at the pool session on Saturday) and I’ve not been able to find Emlyn on the lists at all, so I assume he didn’t eventually compete.

This left Maria (supported by Nigel on the bank) to uphold the honour of the club, which she did logging a time of 3:35:01 (after that much paddling and portaging, the 1 second is clearly important).

Many club members will by now have seen or heard the sad news about Karan Porter who was killed in a car accident on Wednesday evening whilst on her way home from slalom training last week.

Karan was an active member of Shropshire Paddlesport for many years and will be missed by her many friends in the club and by the people that she coached in the last year, especially the youngsters at Bryn Offa Primary School.

Her partner Richard has said that instead of any flowers or cards he would like donations to go to the Cinnamon Dog Walking Trust, with whom Karan also volunteered. Their website address is:
http://www.cinnamon.org.uk

Details of Karan’s funeral will be circulated to club members when we know them. Discussions are also taking place as to how as a club we can best remember Karan.

Well Saturday morning dawned beautifully sunny up at Queens Head, but of course it was all still frozen. Despite the beautiful weather if we had gone ahead I think we’d have had quite a lot of teams chosing not to travel because of the bad weather forecast and also the sound of a large number of very expensive boats being chopped up by the icy waters of the Montgomery Canal.

The usual suspects turned up anyway to stand around and gossip in the sunshine and to turn away anyone who thought there might still have been a race on, but thanks to emails, the blog and some heroic ‘phoning around by Bruce the message seemed to have got through to everyone that we’d cancelled.

It was very pretty up there though…

Winter view of the road bridge

Is the pub open yet...?

Sorry chaps - I’ve just heard from Bruce.  The canal is frozen and the duathlon has been postponed although a new date has yet to be fixed.

Folk will still be down tomorrow I imagine so we can see if conditions are suitable for taking out short boats, opens or the bell boat if anyone wants to meet up.

The club duathlon will be held at Queens Head rather than Shrewsbury due to river levels. It will start with registration from 9.30 with the lightning brief at 10.30 (race at 10:45) and the seniors brief is 11:15 starting to run at 11:30.

This means that there will be no club session on Saturday. However anyone who wants to take part in the race or is able to help is more than welcome to come down anyway!

Contact Deb or Bruce for more information.

The club session on Saturday morning with successful with almost all the lads (plus Gill Otto) chosing to trial the course for the duathlon (which they all did successfully; Cameron decided that the lightning option was a little short so added a couple more runs on to it and Andy has nearly stopped limping and wincing every time he stands up) leaving Caroline Bevan et al to go on a nature paddle to the rat pool spotting kingfishers, lambs and snowdrops.
Aww very pretty.