We ran a variety of trips, bespoke courses and guided river runs around the Briancon / Embrun / Guil / Ubaye area – confidence boosters, white water skills, river leadership skills and playboating days were just some of what we got up to! Here’s a few photos to whet your appetite, a full album of photos from our time in the Alps can be found in our photo section.

Details of next year’s trips will be online soon – so keep your eyes peeled!

Well February and March were very busy indeed here at FlowFree. We’ve run trips abroad, freestyle courses, safety courses, week-long bespoke courses, BCU courses and white water skills courses of all varieties. And our coaches have been just as busy in their spare time: slalom competitions (see below), ski trips, Level 5 development, open boating and much more besides…

New Course Dates Online
We’ve now put all of our course dates for the whole of this year online so you can chose a date to suit you. Of course, if you do not find the course you would like on a date to suit you, just get in touch – we may well be able to arrange (or re-arrange) something for you. Check out our course calendar.

New Confidence Booster Course
Due to popular demand, FlowFree now offers a two-day confidence boosting course for anyone who feels that their inhibitions hold them back on the river. Confidence is a delicate thing and without it, no-one can paddle at their best. Losing your confidence can happen to anyone, of any standard. There may be a trigger – perhaps a you’ve had a bad experience or had a long gap since your last white water adventure – but sometimes you just seem to lose your mojo. We understand how frustrating this can be and would like to help you past that mental block towards happy, relaxed and enjoyable paddling at whatever level you’re at. Low ratios and highly experienced coaches ensure that you will have a very productive weekend, tailored to your needs. For more info and dates, click here.

FlowFree in France this Summer
From mid-June to early July, Lowri will in the French Alps and available for coaching courses, guided trips and playboating clinics. During this time, she will also be running Big Wave courses on demand on the Hawaii-sur-Rhone wave in Lyon. Whether you are freestyle whiz-kid or a river boater who fancies the thrill of surfing a giant standing wave, Lowri can help you to make the most of your time at H-S-R. Our “Intro to Big Wave Surfing” courses have been extremely successful in the past, with big smiles and great feedback every time. Why not come and join the fun? Lyon is perfect if you are on your way to or from the Alps or just fancy a few days of big wave fun as a short break from work.

For more information or to arrange some coaching in France this summer, just reply to this email or give us a call.

Student Boater-X, France
While we’re on the subject of paddling in sunny climes; we’ve just confirmed that we will be sponsoring the 2010 Student Boater-x which takes place on the Durance at l’Argentiere. This event is close to our hearts as our very own Tom Laws was the creator and original organiser of what has become a rip-roaringly fun event. Any Uni groups who will be in the French Alps on 11-12th June should definitely go along. It’s free!

Can we do better?
“To stand still is to go backwards.” – we understand the importance of always seeking to improve. Your feedback is really important to us, which is why we have made it even easier with an online form. If you have recently been on a course with us, please give us any feedback you may have. We take on board anything people take the time to send to us, so whether positive or negative, we want to hear from you!

New Coaching Staff
We take great care in choosing who we employ and have strict criteria: they must be an experienced and passionate paddler who is able to pass on this knowledge, technique and tactics to others through great coaching skills. But most of all, they should be people that we like spending time with and that we think our clients will like too. That’s why we are excited to announce David Fairweather as the latest member of regular FlowFree staff. Dave is an experienced white water paddler who over the past 15 years has paddled in Nepal, Kyrgystan, Morocco, Norway, Italy, India… the list goes on. You can read more about Dave’s adventures and passion for coaching on our About Us section, or check out some of his glowing customer feedback in our testimonials.

Palm Big Paddle
We are proud to announce that FlowFree will be running clinics and will have a stand at the Palm Big Paddle at Symmonds Yat on May 15-16th. If you haven’t heard about the Big Paddle, check out www.thebigpaddle.com – something for everyone!

Slalom Success
After whimsically saying she’d enter a slalom, Lowri realised she had just 4 days back in the UK before she was supposed to race in a Div 1 (for those who don’t know much about slalom, it has leagues like football, which go from Premier down to Div 4 – Premier is for very good people, usually GB Team and those sponsored for slalom who regularly train, so Div 1 is kinda like the best of the rest). There were a few problems with this plan: a) She had been in a slalom boat just twice, ever before b) She didn’t own, nor have access to a slalom boat c) The only rules she knew about slalom were that you had to go through the sticks. In order. Fast.

Luckily, Lowri found a slalom boat, someone told her what the beeping at the start meant and she didn’t miss any gates – resulting in her finishing middle of the field and being granted a rank in Div 1 for future races. Well done!

More Congratulations!
To FlowFree coaches David Fairweather and Lowri Davies for becoming Aspirant BCU Level 5 coaches earlier this month. We wish you luck with your continued coach development!

That’s all for now. We look forward to see you on the water sometime soon!

The FlowFree Team

During our courses, we will often use tools such as video feedback and as part of giving that little bit extra, we will put the footage captured together in a short feedback video. This means you can watch back what you did from the comfort of your home / office, learn from your own mistakes and marvel at your triumphs. We will add a few little pointers to the video, which will reinforce the written feedback and allow you to put it all back into on-the-water context.

Here’s an example feedback video, from a recent Intro to Playboating course:

More videos can be found on our youTube channel.

The weekend will involve a range of disciplines with the idea being to give people the opportunity to try disciplines they may otherwise never get to try while allowing those with experience to showcase their discipline and excel. We will take the results from each event to determine an overall winning University and to award the best paddler in each category. However, the focus of the weekend is most certainly on making sure everyone has fun.

Below is the timetable and other useful info for those coming along – but first… We are still looking for helpers! We need people to help with the time-keeping, judging, scribing, running etc. No special skills or knowledge required, although if you know anything about sprint, polo or WWR you will be very much loved. In return for your help, we can offer you free accommodation and food for the weekend, plus free entry to the Saturday night party and may even be able to cover reasonable fuel expenses or a few beers. Please get in touch if you can help!

Getting There

The event is taking place in Llandysul, mid-Wales – get directions, please see http://www.llandysul-paddlers.org.uk/centre/how_to_get_here.htm. Camping is available on site and all events will take place pretty much on site too; so once you are there you shouldn’t need to drive anywhere!

Timetable

Below is a provisional timetable – please understand that times are liable to change so it is important that you come to the briefings and keep an eye on notice boards for an changes to the timetable. You will notice that some events on the lake and the river over lap, this is to make sure we fit everything in. We will do our best to ensure that no-one has clashing events but each competitor’s own responsibility to check and bring it up with an organiser as soon as possible.

Friday

Camping will be available, so come along as early as you like. There a couple of pubs within walking distance or the usual campsite capers.

Saturday

8.30am-9am: Final Registration – club captains please come and confirm your entries. Make sure you know the names of everyone competing and what they will be competing in. We will particularly need final team-lists for the polo event.

10am: Morning briefing – to be attended by all competitors, in the area outside the outdoorkit4u shop. Start lists go up.

10.30am-12.30pm: Polo group stage. Lake.

11am-3pm: Slalom. 2 timed runs on a short course. You may use any boat, some slalom boats will be available to borrow. River.

2pm-4pm: Flatwater sprint. Lake.

4-6pm: Floodlit it’s-a-knockout. We hope to have time for a fun its-a-knockout type event. Details will be announced on the day.

6.30pm-late: Food & party time! Porth Hotel, within 5 minutes walk of the camp site in Llandysul. You will need a ticket to get food, so make sure your club captain has registered everyone and that you do not lose your ticket!

Sunday

9am-12pm: WWR. One timed run in any craft, some WW racers will be available to borrow.  River.

12.30-1.30pm: Head-to-head. Seeded heats of 4, top 2 from each heat will go through to next round, and must make their way back to the top of the course immediately. River.

2-3.30pm: Polo finals. Top two teams from each group battle it out for 1^st,2^nd,3^rd and 4^th. Plus Ladies teams final. Lake.

4.30pm: Prize giving. Stick around to find out who has won each event (we’ve gt some cool prizes to give away) and which University has won the overall prize!

Other Stuff

We have plenty of recreational kayaks available for use and a few slalom and WWR boats as well, so you can try out each discipline for real – or you can stick to the boat you are used to.

There is a paddling shop on site (outdoorkit4u) who will be offering 10% discount all weekend. On top of that, we have a couple more outfitters coming down with stands to sell gear and lend out demo boats, such as the new Jackson Kayak playboats.

You are free to use the river or lake between events, however be aware that the centre also has a course running so they may ask that you do not use part of the lake at certain times.

To download the timetable as a Word doc, click here.

We look forward to seeing you there!

The problem with ending up sat on one of those inviting rocks or in the eddy behind it is that you are unable to get out due to the sheer sided river banks. It is at this point that Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue, the fire services or another suitably skilled and equipped rescue team has to be called out. In the last of these incidents, a member of Ogwen Valley MR was seriously injured.

So why is it that so many people end up here? Well, I think there are several factors: if the river is high the takeout eddy is the middle of a fun and bouncy rapid; the large Penmachno bridge that some people presume they will see is actually virtually impossible to see from the river; some people do not walk down to see what the take out looks like from the river so do not recognise it when they get there; and occasionally there will be further circumstances such as a swim in the rapid above. Many guides to the river make note of warning makers (wooden posts at 200m, 100m and one at the take out eddy) – but over time these old posts, which were originally painted bright white, have become faded, dull and hard to spot.

There has been much discussion about what could be done to help reduce the number of incidents and often that discussion ends up focusing on the moral issues of whether something should be done at all. Here at FlowFree, we felt it was time that talk was turned into action. We respect that the river is a natural environment and paddlers should be responsible their own safety, and the safety of those they are paddling with – but we also could not sit back and watch more paddlers getting into trouble on our local river.

Rather than putting up new warning signs, we decided that the best course of action would be the make the existing warning markers brighter and easier to spot. Here’s some photos of our work:

We left the 200m and 100m writing on.

200 metres to go!

100 metres to go!

TAKE OUT!!

Please note that although we hope that this will help people to spot the markers more easily, it is should not replace the need for all groups to be familiar with where the take out is, especially on a river where it is so critical. If you plan to paddle this section of the Conwy, please take the time to walk down to the take out eddy (from Conwy Falls Cafe, walk over Penmachno Bridge and turn left onto a well-worn path then follow the path down to the river and then walk upstream of the yellow mark a bit to familiarise yourself with the view of the eddy from upstream). The section has two harder rapids, usually graded as Vs: immediately after the second of these, there is a grade III+ (fairly chunky in high water) which eases to grade III – stay alert and start looking for the markers and your take out eddy as early as possible in this rapid . If you are not familiar with the river, you may consider hiring one of our local river guides to ease the worry of missing the take out and let you relax and enjoy the river.

We hope this helps to prevent further accidents on this fantastic section of river.

An unfortunate sheep takes a closer look of a syphon under Penmachno Bridge

You can now book instantly online using paypal or a credit / debit card. Once you’ve paid, just complete the online booking form on the page you are taken back to and you’re done. No need to print anything off. No need to post anything. No need to even use the phone! You can book yourself a superb day or two on the water from the comfort of your home in just a few clicks.

Of course, if you prefer the human touch – you can still pay by cheque or bank transfer and our printable booking form is still available too.

For full details, see www.flowfree.co.uk/booking-info.

Nick drops into the Moyen Tarn. C’est Bon!

Tom lines up on “Rib Cage” of the Haute Borne

More fun on the Haute Borne

FlowFree-Ride on the Mimente

Throughout the weekend we will also be on-hand to answer questions and take bookings, so keep an eye out for stand – we’ll have a flag!

For more info see the Paddlefest website, or drop us an email.
]]> http://www.flowfree.co.uk/2009/01/ff-at-paddlefest/feed/ 0 http://www.flowfree.co.uk/2009/01/2nd-north-wales-playboat-gathering/ http://www.flowfree.co.uk/2009/01/2nd-north-wales-playboat-gathering/#comments Fri, 02 Jan 2009 22:13:01 +0000 Lowri http://www.flowfree.co.uk/?p=59 After the success of the first gathering that saw 27 people braving the cold on the Dee… a mixture of novices to GB team, C1 and K1, men and ladies, old and young all having fun messing about on the river.

Brandon was elected “winner” of that gathering for general fun attitude and smileyness and he decided that the next one would be….

February 1st at Tryweryn (with the Dee as a back up if there is no release of there is lots of water).

Meet 12pm.

There’s a facebook event for it here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=41401264019#/event.php?eid=41401264019

See ya there!

Stay tuned for part two of the adventure, here’s a taster of what we found in the forest:

It’s great living in Wales