Seasoned outdoor BBC presenter Kate Humble will be picking up a paddle, donning some Palm kit and jumping in a Mad River Canoe at our first demo event of the season this weekend.
The Springwatch and Lambing Live adventure girl will be at Surf-Lines, Llanberis on Saturday, May 14th at 11.30am leading a kayak and canoe flotilla across the beautiful waters of Llyn Padarn to officially open the Surf-Lines Adventure Gym.
The ever resourceful team at Surf-Lines have spotted a new concept that works in the same way as a standard gym. You can sign up for monthly memberships and then make use of thier extensive range of outdoor equipment and demo boats.
Take your pick from their rowing skull, or one of the stand-up paddleboards, Wilderness Systems and Dagger kayaks, Mad River Canoes or Islander sit-on tops. There will also be wild swimming sessions, as well as regular coaching clinics for those wanting to improve any of their other adventure sports skills.
Staff from Palm will be on site at the demo on Saturday to advise on choice of boat, equipment set-up and showcasing products from the new Palm apparel line. We’ll also be brining along the new Infinity Inflatable kayaks for trial.
For more on the demo event and Surf-Lines Adventure Gym check the web site.
Avon and Somerset police recently arrested and charged a man from Western-Super-Mare in conjunction with the theft and sale of stolen Palm Equipment products.
An alarm was raised after Palm premium apparel items, including £500 plus Stikine and Torrent immersion suits, appeared at unusually low prices on the on-line market place E-bay.
Recognised as a non authorized seller, the Clevedon company informed the police and the subsequent investigation led to a raid on a home and subsequent arrest of an ex employee.
Commenting on the theft, Palm Technical Director Bob Slee observed “We keep an eye on sites like E-bay for anomalies in our product sales. This case sends a clear signal to would be thieves that e-bay is not above the law and action will be taken to protect companies like ourselves and those who sell legitimately on the site.’
He added a note of caution for buyers “Sadly those who have bought the suits are in possession of stolen goods and technically they should return them. We have all the product batch numbers so will be able to track and retain any that are returned or appear elsewhere.’
At this very moment , intrepid duo Nick and Ed are about half way around the Isle of White on a 24hr charity paddle.
Check out the web site for info on the trip- maybe make a donation. Below is the message we got from their support crew first thing this morning as they set off.
Ed and Nick launched into the dark waters of the Solent at 0035hrs this morning. They have started from Cowes on the Island and our currently heading towards Yarmouth and then the Needles.
The weather is overcast but visibility is perfect and a gentle breeze from the West. The sea state is flat.
Words from the originally named kayak.. Duo ”Loving it, but need a pee”
Any messages at this very stupid hour for the “Duo” welcome.
Not all paddling on the Thames is recreational during the summer. The whitewater crowd are still out and about.
From the Tuesday night squirt boat sessions at Chertsey weir run by the guys from WWTCC, to the Boulters Youth Freestyle event and slalom competitions, its all happening.
Its been a while since any of us from Palm did slalom but inspired by the recent, and spectacular, European Championships we decided to get the race boats out and give it a go at theShepperton Canoe Club division Three and Four race.
The event was entry level , which basically means you can rock up in any old tub and get your race head on. With summer river levels prevailing there wasn’t much flow to tackle, but none-the-less the organisers had set a devious course that got you working hard throughout.
It was a fun event and you’ve got to hand it to the BCU, the development of paddlesport at youth level is inclusive and encompassing. At Shepperton the majority of the paddlers were under sixteen and many from clubs from inner city areas – nice one.
Winter on the Thames is all about the weir sluices that form the heart of the British playboating scene. However when the river levels drop and the sun comes out the Thames takes on a different persona so aptly described by Jerome K Jerome in the classic novel ‘Three men in a boat’.Tranquil waters, gentle currents and a generous smattering of riverside teashops and pubs make this river a classic UK touring paddle.This little sojourn involved a return paddle from Reading to Shiplake; taking in the fantastic St. Patrick’s stream, River Loddon, some award winning architecture and a superb picnic in the sun.
Other Thames river craft come in many shapes
The entrance to St. Patrick
The backwaters of the Thames feature award winning and very exclusive properties
Check out this classic electric canoe - 101 years old!
Ever eccentric, the British take camping to spectacular heights of refinement
Driving our big events van to Scotland in high winds was pretty eventful – you felt like you were surfing the road at times but eventually we got there.
The Big Van surfed to Scotland
The site was a great little Loch about half an hour from Edinburgh with a superb watersports facility, which also hosts Scotland’s largest club – Fife Canoe Club. It was held over two days so plenty of time to talk the Brookbank guys through some new kit and get people on the water. As well as enthusiasts for Tour and White water boats the sunshine on the Sunday brought loads of local families to try paddling for the first time – cool!
Cam and Lawrence from Brookbank
The Brookbank guys are all keen paddlers so after the event finished on Saturday we pilled into the vans and headed up to Perth to paddle the classic river Tay. It’s only a short blast of a few miles but less than an hour from Scotland’s major cities it is a brilliant section full of on the fly play. Hats off to Canoe Scotland for working with other local users (especially the fishermen) to secure access to this spot.
Stanley Playwave
The weapons of choice were longer faster surf boats so Cam the Brookbank Scotland store manager took the Axiom for a rip whilst Lawrence, store manager from Lancaster, got the Juice to make the most of the wave trains that you could catch on the way down.
Check this little video of one of the sections on the Tay
Some areas have a profusion of outdoor possibilities. In the USA outdoor magazines often have features on the top 10 outdoor towns. Well, north Wales and specifically places like Betws-y-Coed and up-and-coming Llangollen are on my list for a UK version.
My trip to the area took me first to the Plas-y-Breninset a few miles outside Betws, in Capel Curig. The area is steeped in hill and mountain climbing history, sat on the edge of the Horseshoe pass that leads to the climbs of Llanberis and only a short distance to Snowdon (Wales highest peak). The Brenin carries the heavyweight title of being the UK National Mountain Centre and is a veritable institution of outdoor activity.
Palm has been a sponsor of the centre for over fifteen years and the coaches, lead by Loel Colins and Pete Catteral have really put paddlesports on the map at the Brenin. This visit gave me chance to see what they had been up to, how Palm kit was standing up to hardcore professional use and also get some feed back on a few new products. Everything seemed to have worked really well and the guys were super happy with their sets of gear. The vote for best product was unanimously the Aleutian jacket but it was good to see that other items like the gear supplied for the Safety and Rescue Test Centre were getting loads of use.
With all the snow that unusually fell here in the UK last week the views from the centre dinning room in the morning were amazing so here’s a few pics to inspire. If you want to join them they have probably the broadest range of courses available and their web site is now featuring regular offers so take a look.
Next it was a quick trip to the National Whitewater Centre at Canolfan Tryweryn. This is a great facility (more so now that paddling is free) but my journey was not for getting in a boat instead to meet with Rescue 3 UK. To summarise what these guys do would require some more floods such as we have seen in the last few years. If you see the fire brigades rescuing folk from flooded homes then these are the people that taught them to do it. They are amazing flood and swift water rescue specialists and as we are doing some new products for this area its to their expertise we turn for critique. They don’t confine their teaching to professionals either with courses for groups and clubs as well, so if you want to stay safe take a look them up.
Finally another great drive through the snowy landscape took me to Llangollen and Ty’n Dwr. This used to be the old Youth Hostel but has recently been bought and had£2 million invested in a major refurbishment scheme for…. You guessed it, an outdoor centre! The new owners, theUniversity of Central Lancashire (UCLAN) are one of those newer style institutions that move quickly, don’t get bogged down in unnecessary bureaucracy and act like a business. The result is a centre for study that, in terms of Outdoors, is at the forefront with higher-level courses (they have four outdoor specific degree courses), and probably the best outdoor centre building I have seen in the UK.
Last week was there grand opening which was a proper braces and boots event of networking and handshaking.It was a great afternoon started by the plaque unveiling by the university vice Chancellor and the local mayor. The best bit was the tour of the facilities by head of dept Nigel Garret. He helped find the building (a grade II listed Victorian country house) and has been instrumental in bringing together industry partners like like Rescue 3, Coed Landegla mountainbike centre plus ourselves with leading coaches and lecturers.
The result is quite some thing to see – certainly most of the people on the tour fancied giving it all up to go back and study…. if only for the 3 star student digs alone!
When you work for kayaking company its not all paddle, paddle, paddle, we have to work as well, so we leave the paddling all day, everyday, to the pro’s and students…. But you can only talk about paddling for so long before the urge to get in a boat gets to much.
So what do industry types do for a boating fix -they go out at odd times.
Yesterday evening we headed off toHurley weir on the Thames for a night surf as we’d heard the wave was rocking. Luckily we found that a crew had brought some lights (cheers Dan) so a great session took place under floodlights. Whilst there we caught up with Gareth from the TVF web site who told us about the upcoming Hurley Classic rodeo. If you are UK freestyler this is the spot to try and to get involved in the longest running UK rodeo comp – check it here.
Tim Ripping the Dagger Super Ego
Not having had quite enough we got our kit out again (all praise the dry suit) just after dawn this morning and went back. Thinking it would be empty we found the wave already occupied. Desperate Measures had beaten us onto the water after getting up at 4 am. The guys were fitting in a paddle ahead of a day collecting stock for their shop – another set of paddlesport industry employees getting thier fix at odd times!
Danny from DM
Three gates in the daylight!!
After paddling we went off to visit the guys at White Water The Canoe Centre to check how they have altered their store ( luckily without loosing the massive collection of posters, signed photos, comp bibs and other paddling history they have covering the walls). As they showed us around, it seemed that the Scutt brothers, who co-run the store, were looking a little tired and it soon came out that they too had been out on dawn patrol, slalom training before the store opened.
WWTCC - tired shop staff!
So if you want to find the latest news about paddling, see the latest kit and meet the faces the best thing to do is set the alarm a bit earlier!
We had a whistle stop trip to Ireland this weekend for the inaugrial Colliagan Boater X race , here’s a few piccies and scribblings about the trip.
The event kicked off bleary eyed early on Saturday as the plan was to get it done in one day. With about 100 entrants (many of them fresh faces to Irish boating thanks to the Uni clubs of UCL and UCC) it ran amazingly smoothly throughout thanks to Paul and his organising team who impressively were hosting an event for the first time.
The course was on the gorge section of the Colligan river – a nice 400m stretch of class II and III with a few tricky shoots and slots giving competitors the chance to pass one another or better still jam others from passing. The river level was lowish but it never really matters for this sort of thing, as its all about jostling for position and the odd rock spinning a paddler out lends to the fun.
We all choose to use the Dagger Green boat which meant that we were at an advantage over everyone else by about a half boat length. This was great if you could get out in front - like Rosie did to win the ladies event, but not if you got trapped behind other racers – like I did in the mens final where the other racers made a pact to stop me at all costs!
The team race also had some twists with a cheeky eddy above the crux and a finishing bell which all had to ring. Again team Palm came unstuck in this race as we could not get enough space for Tim to ring the bell as the Greens filled to much of the eddy!
As expected there is alawys a little carnage, but that’s racing and part of the thrill of head to head. Your man here was the only one to get bloody though and he laughed it off and had a pint in hand by the evening!
As dusk fell prizes were handed out and the whole gang up’d and moved to Waterford for a cartoon themed night of dancing and drinking in a local bar. Needless to say our early morning ferry the next day was painful but luckily there was a tidy little bit of surf when we got off the boat to try the new Dagger Axiom and clear the head.
Thanks again to the Colligan team, the Colligan falls holiday appartments for letting paddlers use thier site and to Great Outdoors (check thier new web site) for inviting us to the event.
We are just back from the annual Kanumesse trade fair in Nuremburg Germany. Its a special show because (as far as we know) its the biggest kayak trade only event, anywhere. Usually at trade events paddlesport is pitched alongside the great and the good like North Face or someone selling propellers for Sunseaker yachts but at this show its purely about paddlers which is cool.
The Palm mannequins were doing the robot dance again this year
Always plenty of new stuff to see, so here are some of our highlights for the year ahead:
Immersion suits – We have done a lot of work on the Stikine and Torrent models to improve durability and performance. New features like the Kevlar elbow pads (on the Stikine) and neat details like zipper covers and super slick welded socks finish our suits off to what, we think, will become a new industry benchmark. The 2009 suits (Stikine, Torrent, Element- with pee buddy as standard, and Aleutian) will be made from a new XP250 fabric which we’ve had in the field for about a year now with the ever demanding Gene 17 coaching team.
a little teaser of the new suits - available at the end of the year
Paddle wear – We launched another product in our Approach line at Kanumesse. The Velocity is a latex sealed entry level jacket to compliment our huglely popular Vertigo semi dry model. Breathable, tapped throughout and with twin waist and outer seal covers its a great starter piece.
New Velocity Approach jacket
Footwear - Its been hard to keep quite about our joint project with Merrell. When the worlds biggest footwear brand chooses you to work with on a completely new watershoe you want to shout about it. We’ll now we can – two models, the Gradient and Eddy will be in the shops come spring and we can happily inform you that they stick like …. we’ll you’ll see. Needless to say folks were clamouring around to check them out and they made the front page of the shows daily magazine!
Gradient (lft) and Eddy (rt) - sticky stuff!
Dagger – Two new models and a load of improvments on fit out for our Dagger kayaks brand. The Axiom river boat was regarded by many as the best new WW boat there. Showing clean lines and we’ll tested principles it is set to become a classic river crusing machine taking over where its predecessor (the RPM) left off. Its very new skool, old skool so get set for a tail dipping style revival on your favourate runs.
The Axiom - 4 sizes of river fun!
The Alchemy touring boat is a bit of a departure from the normal ‘journey’ style tour boats. It’s wide-ish beam and adjustable skeg will make it ideal for begginners and help tracking, but its designed to move once you get it on edge so search out those rock gardens, waves and river channels to explore its potential. A perfect boat to grow into as a paddler.
The Dagger stand- the new Alchemy is the Red boat at the top
So that’s about all from Kanumesse 08, we are now busy getting all of the new items into production and onto the shelves. We look forward to hearing what you get up to using them!
A big thanks to HF for organising with usual efficency and also thanks to all the dealers who travelled to see us.
