Liverpool University Canoe Club

Here’s a report about Tuesday night’s talk at LCC. Incidentally, LCC are running a whole series of informal kayaking Lectures, slideshows and DVD evenings, mostly Free, and approximately fortnightly – well worth heading down to. As those who’ve been to the recent talks (Simon Willis talk, and rolling talk) know, LCC are v friendly, any local paddlers are welcome to the evenings,  and I expect the organisers would also be very happy if you have an idea for a future talk or slideshow and would like to get involved – see LCC website for list of talks.  The next two are:

Mon 7th Dec – “Fuelling the Paddle Engine – A Paddler’s Diet” a talk by Frankie Annan (Free)
Mon 14th Dec – DVD Evening – “Genes Advanced White Water” – (Free)

Both at the Marina restaurant (near Merseysport) – starting 8pm, get there a bit earlier in time to get a drink.

We went to see Simon Willis’s talk at LCC. He was advertising his recent book – about a Scottish Sea Kayak Trail - a “how-to” book for paddling a trip along the whole Western coast of Scotland – and also Gordon Brown’s coaching DVD (sea paddling techniques). So we got to see quite a bit of footage of very beautiful scottish coastline, and also hear how one would go about doing a sea touring trip of the west coast.

Something to give us a bit of a sea-kayaking bug.

Doing the whole trip would involve around 17 days of paddling, plus a very random and variable number of bad-weather-days – in their case 14 (!) – and at least a couple of days for the shuttle – so its not something you can easily fit into a quick break. But the info is all there, and has also been split into four smaller chunks, somewhat more managable for smaller amounts of time.

The coaching DVD has two elements to it – the main thread of the DVD is a four day journey up the coast of Skye,  following a mixed group of paddlers, as they push their paddling skills, do some wild camping, and visit small islands off the  coast. In addition to this, interspersed with the journey, is a coaching progression, arranged in eight modules,  filmed in both calm and rough conditions. The DVD menu is set up so that its also possible to watch just the  journey, or just the coaching.
The whole thing is very professionally made – very slick – and the journey part of the story is  interesting, especially as one of the paddlers is a ranger, giving informative and charming commentary on Skye history,  from ancient cairns to 19th century shark fishing settlements, as well as some lovely wildlife bits.

By having a professional broadcaster running the project, the whole feel of both book and DVD are that they have been given the “Countryfile” or “Coast” treatment – listening to Simon Willis’s paced and narrato-mercial voiceover makes you feel that you are in your living room watching something on the 8pm slot of BBC2, being informatised to
But that is no bad thing. I’m actually rather fond of the more informal, raw feel of other kayak DVDs, but its certainly very nice too to see something as polished and High Def as this one. We got told quite a bit of info about how the filming had been done, what kind of cameras etc, and how they had achieved the to-camera coaching instruction and paddler-view using a scaffold on the front of the kayak, and a clever mic set-up – it is very effective, and Ade wants one for his spud.

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