Shropshire Paddlesport Blog

One of the things about being based on a skinny canal is that working with *really* big boats is a bit tricky - if you try to put something like a K4 in the water at the shed then you have to go all the way up to the winding point by the aqueduct before you can turn it in that direction and if you’re going down the canal you’re limited to picking it up and turning it around by hand.

So, as a result, we don’t have K4s at SHP, however when Deb and I were at Nottingham for the coaching conference we got talking to some people from other clubs and came away with an invitation to “come down and play in one of ours”. So with her “girly rep” head on Deb set up a trip and last Sunday she, Ellie, Alice and Emily took a trip down to Burton to have a go in their K4.

As it turned out it was an absolutely beautiful day for paddling and the people from Burton were incredibly welcoming and helpful (even to the extent of lending is one of their Junior girls so that not everyone had to be on the water all the time). Much paddling was done and no falling in happened so all in all the day must be viewed as a success.

We even have pictures…

Mike is organising a club open canoe trip on the 28th (Sunday) December at the Poachers Pocket near Chirk. This is a beautiful bit of canal and should be well worth doing. And it involves a pub so it must be good. Please contact Mike by the 27th if you’re interested.

When Deb and I used to belong to the Potteries paddlers in Stoke on Trent, one of their trips was a “sociable” paddle on New Year’s day morning - a nice gentle couple of hours paddle ending up in the pub for a warm up (or a hair-of-the-dog) depending on how alcoholic your previous night’s partying was.

Does anyone fancy doing the same this year somewhere around here? Something not too strenuous (and which hopefully doesn’t involve breaking any ice)…

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.