My daughter was recently asked when paddling a grade 4 stretch of river, so when did you start paddling, she carmly replied forever!
A keen paddler now looking for greater adventures she jumped out of the car lifting and strapping her boat on a car that I could only assume could have been an extra from the inbetweeners series, she jumped ship to head off into deepest Wales with a bunch of students paddlers from Bangor university out for a paddle. I guess my role as coach, instructor and river guide might be over as my daughter stood her own, paddling a grade 4 drop she did a capsize, the group looked to rescue but a quick flick of a hip she was up and off downstream, the group looked on for someone else to rescue.
So how do you start off with paddling with kids- we I guess that story is linked to why we set up a canoe club, faced with the option of taking a sabbatical from paddling with the birth of our firstborn we decided to start this rather mad an unorthodox way of getting a boat so we could start paddling as a family. The Olympic games had just been announced an we where looking optimistically at purchasing our first open canoes- the easiest way of affording this without asking for yet another loan from the parents was to build a new type of canoe club that was aimed at family paddling.
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Paddling with a family did take a bit more preperation but we soon made it quite easy, having a few games to play as well as a bag of snacks and then insuring we had some short paddle trips which would allow for a variety of paddling, walking a tow path and having a lunchbox of snacks and drinks was the answer to most of our adventures. As the kids got a little bigger we would add a little more distance to each adventure.
Try and paddle on your kids terms.
we found that paddling on their adventure worked best , we would head off but with a small plan to paddle and we found we can always add a short distance or an additional lock on a trip , but its important to stop whilst they are still having fun.
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We worked as a club to quickly get the right kit for begineers- we soon specialised in having boats with skegs so that young paddlers didnt end up constantly in the bushes or worse in a clump of stinging nettles. As paddlers develop skils we are able to retract the skeg so that paddlers can develop skills as they get the hand of paddling.
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Paddling on the Rothay in lake district and visiting the islands off of Grassmere home to the author of Swallows and Amazon Arthur Ransome