FlowFree Coaching | Category Archive

Archive | Whitewater RSS feed for this section

French Alps 2010

Earlier this year we spent several weeks in the French Alps, where we had great water levels and super-hot sunshine almost every day 🙂

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.

Slides in Italy

Fireworks in Embrun on Bastille Day

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

Read full story

Newsletter : April 2010

Hello and welcome to the latest FlowFree newsletter!

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

Read full story

Conwy Falls – don’t end up on THAT rock…

Conwy Falls has been an infamous site for kayakers for many years. The waterfall itself has had a handful of successful descents but upstream of the falls lies a nasty rapid, which in recent years has been the scene of an increasing number of incidents. You see the nasty rapid I talk about lies just around the corner from the take out of the classic Middle Conwy, under Penmachno Bridge. The incidents occur when paddlers miss their intended take-out eddy: if you notice your mistake fast enough you may be able to get yourself to safety, however if not you will most likely end up stuck down here:

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

Read full story

Massif fun all round!

Myself and Jon Davies have recently returned from guiding one of Flowfree’s Steep Long Weekends in the Massif Central in Southern France. We had a real range of weather from pleasantly hot to sideways “coffee shop” rain. Starting off with some classic bedrock on the middle Tarn, we also paddled the fantastic upper Borne, Mimente and a section of the Upper Ardeche. High water levels scuppered our plans for a run on the upper Tarn, so we made do with some fantastic alpine-style boating to round off the long weekend. Keep your eyes open for next year’s trip, coming Easter 2010….But for now I’ll let the pictures tell the story…

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

Read full story

FF at Paddlefest

FlowFree are proud to announce that we will be providing coaching clinics, workshops and freestyle demonstrations at Paddlefest in Nottingham this March 28-29th. Sessions will include Introduction to Playboating and workshops for nailing your cartwheels and loops.

Paddlefest Logo

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.

Read full story

2nd North Wales Playboat Gathering

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.

The gang at the 1st gathering

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!

Read full story

Exploring North Wales

Everyone knows that North Wales is a honeypot for white water kayaking, with thousands of paddlers making the migration here every weekend. With all those paddlers about, are there still adventures to be had off the beaten track? Somewhere up in the hills behind FlowFree HQ, an epic gorge awaited an exploratory mission…

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 🙂

Read full story

Rhaeadr Mawddach- The big one!

On Friday 24th of October I set out to go and scout Rhaeadr Mawddach… little did I know by the end of the day I’d be one of the few people to have ever paddled it and star on national radio!

As I know most of you are just itching to see the footage, here it is… the story is below.

I have been waiting to run these falls on the Upper Mawddach ever since I saw them about 2 years ago. Running the whole river I never had the time to really get the feel for the drop and have an objective look at them as there is always more fun bits to paddle downstream, but the falls never left my mind as something I wanted to run.

After deciding today was the day to go and have proper look, I managed to persuade a friend and his wife to come along for “a nice walk”. Unfortunately for them, they were supposed to be going for a relaxing day at a spa (sorry for ruining that one guys!).

On arriving, the falls looked amazing with good levels and the sun was beaming down – a true autumn day in Wales. For Rick and Claire Foster it was the first time they had seen the falls but they stayed cool and let me take my time deciding what to do. Very much appreciated!

After strolling back to the car, I realised I had forgotten my river shoes and elbow pads not the best for a delicate mind-set but the time was right and everything felt good.

Back at the falls I ran through my line once more in my head, passed Claire the camera and we were ready to huck.

Getting into the flat pool above, it looked like one of the best horizons I have ever seen but with a stiff back and cold muscles I wasn’t going to rush things… a good 10 minutes of warm ups later, I was ready to go.

Cameras rolling I set off down the entry rapid and I was through clean. Right, here we go… first drop I need to get a good flair off the right to avoid rolling or subbing out… No problem, right now the big one, I just need to hit the rooster tail… perfect. One impact on the slab, second impact through the big pillow, now correct the angle and wait for the pool!

Wooooo Hoooo!

From leaving the lip of the big falls to the pool was shear exhilaration as the work was done and I could just let the boat fly.

A few hours later the lovely Faern Cotton from Radio 1 called up to interview me, as they were looking for stories relating to ‘Waterfalls’ by the Stone Roses…. so it was obviously just the right day!

You can hear the interview on BBC iPlayer on this link http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00f0t2t (at 2:48:50) – or click here to download just the interview

Read full story

The New WCA Freestyle Plan!

The next WCA Freestyle Development weekend was due to be the 15th of November. With Stanley Embankment being shut due to works on the bridge (see previous post), I have made a new plan. We’ll now be running a single day session at Chester Weir on the 8th November with a more advanced session at Tryweryn on December 6th.

Saturday 8th November: Chester Weir (map)

Cost: £10 per paddler (paid on the day)

Chester Weir has a couple of friendly features and eddylines we can use to develop basic freestyle skills such as front surfs, spins, cartwheels and enders and is ideal for those who are less confident on white water. What we will cover will depend on numbers and abilities of those attending.

Parking is available on Castle Drive (see map for details) – it is pay and display. Please note that there are no changing facilities.

Meet at 9.30am the car park shown on the map.

Booking: To ensure we have enough coaches, please email wca-freestyle@flowfree.co.uk if you intend to come to either day (you can still come if you haven’t emailed – it just helps us to plan if you let us know!). Please put either ‘Chester Weir’ or ‘Tryweryn’ in the title to help me keep track.

Saturday 6th December: Tryweryn (subject to a dam release)

Cost: £10 per paddler (paid on the day)

Tryweryn has 3 good freestyle features to work on anything from spins and blunts to cartwheels, loops and felixes (no, really!). It is a bit more advanced so the day will be designed for people who are confident on whitewater and have a solid whitewater roll.

Read full story

Important News: the next WCA Freestyle Development Weekend

Quote:

Contractors for Railtrack are undertaking repairs to the bridge which forms the wave at Stanley. The tunnel is closed for 4-7weeks from 16th October. This means that the wave will likely be out of action until early December.

WCA have been assured that the wave will not change as a result of these engineering works.

This means the development weekend planned for 15-16th Nov will NOT be at Stanley!

I am trying to make alternative arrangements at the moment but with current political issues and the less guaranteed water at Tryweryn over the next 6 weeks, finding a suitable venue for that date is pretty challenging. I hope to have further info by the start of next week.

Sorry for any inconvenience this causes.

Please let others who were planning to attend know!

Thanks,

Lowri

Read full story

← Previous 1 … 3 4 5 Next →

latest blogs