Today a friend from church who is in Belfast Kayak Club had arranged a session with the guys from Mobile Team Adventure (I’ve nabbed the photo from their website) for anyone from my church who wanted to have a go at kayaking down at Shaw’s Bridge. There was about 20 of us, half set out in open boats and the other half in kayaks. The craic was really good, we played a bit of polo and tag and all that and then had a little run down the rapids. Having had a look at the rapids last week it was good to get a run down them. To be honest there’s more excitement to be had on the Bann or Blackwater as Shaw's Bridge only has about 4 rapids, but I was surprised by the power of the flow at the bottom rapid and there’s definitely a bit of fun & learning to be had. One of the instructors was trying to help me to do tail squirts (paddling into the flow, reverse stroke with edge and your tail should disappear into the water and your bow should shoot up) and although I didn't really succeed I had good fun trying! Then we kind of ran out of time otherwise I would have liked to played about a bit more but all in all it was a good day’s craic!
Sunday, 16 November 2008
This weekend I managed to get paddling twice! Yesterday I was on the Bann from Laurencetown to Gilford with the guys from the club. The water was pretty low, definitely a lot lower than the time I’d been last there at the start of September. A couple of the guys had paddled it on Friday and they said it must have dropped off maybe 7-8 inches overnight. So at the start I was thinking we’d be having a real scraping session, but actually some of the features were at a great level to play on and ideal for someone like me trying to get to grips with surfing etc. There was one standing wave in particular which usually is too big that I can’t get onto it, but yesterday I managed it and actually began to feel at ease with what I was supposed to be doing on the wave, so I absolutely was loving that. We spent about 3 hours making our way down the river yesterday, the weather was spot on, some blue sky, not too cold, just a great day to be out enjoying the world.
Today a friend from church who is in Belfast Kayak Club had arranged a session with the guys from Mobile Team Adventure (I’ve nabbed the photo from their website) for anyone from my church who wanted to have a go at kayaking down at Shaw’s Bridge. There was about 20 of us, half set out in open boats and the other half in kayaks. The craic was really good, we played a bit of polo and tag and all that and then had a little run down the rapids. Having had a look at the rapids last week it was good to get a run down them. To be honest there’s more excitement to be had on the Bann or Blackwater as Shaw's Bridge only has about 4 rapids, but I was surprised by the power of the flow at the bottom rapid and there’s definitely a bit of fun & learning to be had. One of the instructors was trying to help me to do tail squirts (paddling into the flow, reverse stroke with edge and your tail should disappear into the water and your bow should shoot up) and although I didn't really succeed I had good fun trying! Then we kind of ran out of time otherwise I would have liked to played about a bit more but all in all it was a good day’s craic!
Today a friend from church who is in Belfast Kayak Club had arranged a session with the guys from Mobile Team Adventure (I’ve nabbed the photo from their website) for anyone from my church who wanted to have a go at kayaking down at Shaw’s Bridge. There was about 20 of us, half set out in open boats and the other half in kayaks. The craic was really good, we played a bit of polo and tag and all that and then had a little run down the rapids. Having had a look at the rapids last week it was good to get a run down them. To be honest there’s more excitement to be had on the Bann or Blackwater as Shaw's Bridge only has about 4 rapids, but I was surprised by the power of the flow at the bottom rapid and there’s definitely a bit of fun & learning to be had. One of the instructors was trying to help me to do tail squirts (paddling into the flow, reverse stroke with edge and your tail should disappear into the water and your bow should shoot up) and although I didn't really succeed I had good fun trying! Then we kind of ran out of time otherwise I would have liked to played about a bit more but all in all it was a good day’s craic!
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