The Natural Games is a big sports and music festival held over four days in Millau, France. Every day there are competitions and activities in all sports powered by Nature: Kayak Freestyle, Kayak Boatercross, Kayak big air ramp, MTB Downhill, MTB Slopestyle, Paragliding, Climbing, Dragon Boating and Slack Line. Then every evening different artists and DJ’s play to huge crowds. The event draws in over 60,000 spectators over the 4 days!!! It’s a really good atmosphere with so many people coming together here competing, enjoying their sports and watching all the action and music.
Me & Katya were here in 2010 and had a great time, I even took the win which isn’t easy at these french events (the standard is very high) so we were very happy to be invited here again this year!
First up in the kayaking was the Friday evening Boatercross, everyone was given Dagger Mamba’s to use so we were all in the same boat making it fair. We raced just as it was getting dark and the really big crowds were arriving for the music to kick off. We raced in fours with the top 2 going through. Both me and Katya made it through the first round, but got eliminated in the next, racing was very brutal with fierce fighting, paddle’s clashing and blood being spilled (literally in my case: my finger got a bit sliced open by someone’s paddle blade all shown on live french TV. From the freestylers Quim Fontane Maso, Mathieu Dumoulin and Tim Biere’nard lasted the longest providing some fantastic entertainment as Quim & Tim’s ferocious battle eventually knocked them both out but none of the freestylers made it to finals. In the end the final was all down to serious racers and Raphael Thiebaut took the win.
That evening all the invited athletes from the different sports got a taste of stardom as we were all introduced on the main stage to a huge sea of Frenchies
Saturday was the day of battle for us Freestylers. The number of paddlers here is amazing, there are so many kids kayaking (& adults) and generally the standard is high. There were so many competitors in fact that it would take a whole day of solid competing to get through the Cadets, Juniors, C1, Womens & Men’s Prelims, 1/4′s, and Semi’s.
Katya paddled very well in prelims to comfortably make the Women’s Finals in 2nd behind 2xEuropean Champion Marlene Devillez.
For us men we had a real marathon having prelims, quarters and semi’s all in the same day. We had Mat Dumoulin 2x Euro Champ, Quim Fontane Maso current Euro Champ, & Junior World cup winner Sebastian Devred all here, meaning the standard is like Worlds level. The hole here is quite unusual to me, it’s narrow meaning you have to land moves in a very short area in order to stick them. The prelims and quarters I felt good and had good moves but wasted too much time flushing but enough to get through easily, in the Semi’s I hit a great ride scoring 1510 to take 2nd behind Sebastian Devred.
Finals came the next day and the level didn’t disappoint with Junior girls even having high scores with Nuria Fontane taking the win, then in Junior Boys Thomas Richard, a local paddler who really impressed me easily won too. In the women’s I thought Katya had it, she paddled great but judges said Marlene won. Katya (& I) was happy anyway with her getting 3 solid rides.
They have a different judging system here which means sometimes it’s a bit hard for us to work out what scores what, it rewards lots of linking of moves and cartwheel based moves very highly. It does seem a bit softer on the actual moves but overall it’s fair (just a bit random for us who are used to the international system).
In the Men’s final I didn’t have my best day coming 5th out of 7, I just didn’t feel in my usual groove but guess that’s the way it goes. The scores were incredibly high as was the standard. Mathieu, Quim & Sebastian were on fire getting great rides and incredible scores. It was close but in the end Mat took the win with a huge score of 2350!!! Sebastian was 2nd with 1900ish and Quim 3rd with 1790ish.
We came here primarily for training and to see how we’re doing in our preparations for Worlds since their were quite a few of our main rivals here. It’s turned out to be a very good place to train, this hole is unlike anywhere we usually paddle which has made us work on our weakness’s, the french paddlers are very good and really know this kind of features so we got a good taste of Worlds level competing with paddlers on their best.
I’m not too disappointed with my result, training was going well and it’s good to get these blips out of the way before the big events Before here training & competitions had felt like they’re going well on the way to Worlds, and coming 5th here I discovered a few weakness’s and areas I need to improve with plenty of time to solve them. We have a new regime for me and i’m looking forward to seeing how i can improve before the event in Sort, Spain in a few weeks where quite likely we’ll see the same main rivals + Dane Jackson all of us fighting for good prize money so I imagine it’s going to be tough
The festival overall was great to be a part of, they put on a fantastic show, it’s also good to see that in France the Kayaking gets quite a bit of attention and coverage from the media and the public. We enjoyed being here again! Big thanks to the organisers and all participants for making it what it was!
Check out the videos below to get a feel of the event:
The Lunar Orbit is another of my favourite moves. It looks quite complicated but actually it’s much more simple than you might think.
It’s just a Stern Squirt into the bow end of a cartwheel. You start it from a front surf/ blast in a hole. You can even practice the motion of stern squirting into cartwheels on flatwater to get a feel for the move before trying it in a hole.
Step One:
Lift your bow up onto the green water so that you’re sitting in a front surf. You lift the bow using a big sweep stroke and place the nose of your boat slightly pointing in the direction you plan to rotate.
Step Two:
As soon as you reach the front surf, drop your upstream knee so that your edging upstream (catching the water on your tail), at the same time as this tense your core & look around in the direction you’ll rotate and using the back of your blade pry the boat into a stern squirt.
Step Three:
Now your boat will have gone vertical and started to rotate around that prying blade. To keep it in control have a marker directly upstream of you and keep looking ahead of the boats rotation ready to spot that marker just before you slam the bow down again.
Step Four:
Having spotted your upstream marker, switch your pry stroke into a push stroke, keep your weight forwards and aggressively as you can push the bow under the water.
Finishing the move:
After this last end you can either do a big back stroke to make sure you retain in flushy features or in more retentive spots you can continue into more cartwheels or other moves as this move links very well.
Main points to remember:
- Make sure you set your angle & edge correctly on the initiation.
-Keep your core tensed and use your pry to stop yourself from just catching an edge and falling over upstream.
-Look ahead of the boats rotation ready to spot that marker.
-Play around with how far back & forwards you lean during the move to get it fine-tuned.
Our journey to Lienz in Austria had quite an urgent start. We’d been training in Plattling, Germany. There is free camping all along the riverbank in the nature reserve there, the water level was high but not too bad but in the night whilst we’d been sleeping the level had risen dramatically as storms across Germany had thrown down heavy rain.
We awoke to find the bridge off the big island where we were parked completely covered with water, at this point it was only slightly too high to drive the van through. Normally police & officials come when a flood is coming to warn all campers to leave before they open the dam upstream. This time however even they got caught unawares as the whole construction site for building a new bridge, cranes, containers, sand, wood, and portable toilets were all flooded and being washed away.
We were fine and since we had our kayaks we could get most of our stuff to the side but the van looked a bit doomed if the levels rose. Anyway it took a few hours for rescuers to arrive and with the level now nearly a meter deep over the bridge two huge trucks came to lift us out and rescue our little van. We made it (obviously) after a very exciting morning and thought that now would be a good time to head to the mountains of Lienz. As the news showed the week after, it was a good move as Germany had the biggest floods of this century!
Lienz is a beautiful mountain town in the Dolomites popular for cyclists, hikers, climbers & kayakers. It’s also been the site of numerous European competitions, this year they were holding a smaller event but it would still attract quite a few international paddlers coming to compete.
The hole used to be quite sticky but over the winter it looks as if the rocks have shifted creating a challenging flushy wavey hole. It’s difficult to do full rides here but moves go very big. It’s also very good training for Worlds here I think.
The competition started on the river Drau amidst glorious sunshine, with a jam session format for prelims and normal rides for finals.
In the womens final girls did better than I expected given the challenging nature of the hole and all got big loops and some other moves too, Nina Csonkova was 1st, Katya was 2nd and Lucie Horka was 3rd.
Katya with the biggest loop I’ve ever seen!
In the mens I was really fired up and have been treating all comps as warm ups for worlds so I was really wanting to give my best. So I did I won with 300 or 400 points difference, the first win for my new Carbon Dagger Jitsu! 2nd was Martin Koll from Germany who’d had very sick moves in prelims and 3rd was GBR’s Matt Cooke a very good friend who came out of retirement for the competition! It was great to paddle with Matt again in competition, as he was one of the paddlers I really looked up to when I was younger and who helped me loads in my progression as a freestyler.
Thomas Zimmerman the organiser & owner of the La Ola shop here really knows how to put on a good event. Even though it was a small rodeo, we had everything you could wish for. Sun, good friends, big moves, good prize money, free camping, free dinner & drinks all evening, it really made it one of the most fun events to be at. Organisers of World’s should copy this
The locals also showed us one other spectacle as many of them had climbed up all the nearby mountains to light fire beacons of crosses and Christian symbols in memory of the Austrian war with France from years ago which coincided with the prizegiving party so it all added to the great experience!
My new Carbon Jitsu is really flying, now I’ve got it all outfitted and am getting used to it, it’s just getting better and better, I couldn’t be happier with how it’s turned out, we’ll be finishing off the promo video for it in the next few weeks so keep a look out!
Video from my training & competition: http://youtu.be/uDO6JEzn_Wg
This weekend I hopped over to Czech to a small spot in the city of Pilzen for a fun, relaxed, freestyle competition.
It was really good to go to a competition and it have such a good atmosphere around it, friendly people and good weather!
The hole itself was very unusual and quite difficult to set up it, the Czech paddlers definitely have had to learn some unusual techniques to paddle here so it took quite a while for the paddlers who hadn’t been here before to get the hang of how to throw moves here at all
The event was more about socialising, (the punk music was a bit dubious though), playing around in the hole, pushing each other on and paddling for the fun of it. That said in the finals the gloves came off as we all had a good fight to the finish.
I thought either myself or Martin Koll won with Jan spindler somewhere near also. In such a tricky spot its hard to tell what the judges think, so we were all waiting hard to see the scores as it was always going to be close.
This time Jan Spindler won, Martin 2nd & me 3rd. Congrats to Jan!
Here is a short not very edited, selection of the best moves from the finals:
Thank you to all the paddlers, locals and organisers for putting on such a good event and making me feel so welcome to Czech!
Next event is the Lienz rodeo in Austria on the 8th of June, more from me then.
This month i’m going to teach you how to do the McNasty.
It’s a great move, you can start it from many different positions and setups, it’s quick to do, impressive to see and is one of the highest scoring moves.
The technique I’m going to show you here is the most commonly used one and is the one I use nearly all the time.
Step 1: Get yourself into a nice stable side surf.
Step 2: Keep your upstream knee up, hold that edge on, then push off the back face of your paddle and sweep your boat into a back surf.
Step 3: Just before you reach a backsurf, lean forwards and drop your upstream paddle blade into the water and start pulling on the green water.
It’s important not to pause too long in a backsurf or drop your edge here, keep your momentum and keep that edge held on.
Step 4: As your pulling keep looking ahead of the boats rotation. If you have the correct amount of edge you’ll start to go vertical now.
Step 5: Now you should be in a normal looping position. Push down hard on your feet for added pop, jump up and then tuck hard forwards smashing both your paddle blades off the water to push you as high as you can.
Step 6: When your body has gone all the way to the front, snappily open out your body as aggressively as you can & kick your feet out in front of you.
Step 7: Once in a front surf again, do a few quick powerful forward strokes to retain the hole.
Top tips for learning this one:
-Play around with how fast you spin the boat, how much edge you hold on and how long you pause before the loop. Find what works best for your features, boat & style.
-Make sure you spot an upstream marker like a tree or a slalom pole before you throw the loop. This will help you to keep it straight and make it more likely to score.
It’s one of my favourite moves and one of the most fun to do, good luck & get out there and try it.
This weekend we gathered at my home spot for the Dee River Festival in Llangollen, North Wales.
Surflines- The Palm Store - http://thepalmstore.co.uk/ joined the rest of the guys from Palm to show off our 2013 range of kit along with as many Dagger Demos as we could fit in the van.
We were incredibly fortunate that the rain Gods shone on us and brought the river up to a playful 5 meaning some sporty lines downriver and a nice little play wave at the bottom of the Mill section.
The event is all about getting as many paddlers on the water as possible, having a good time, trying out all the latest boats and generally enjoying an iconic Welsh river together.
There were many different activities and coaching clinics going on for all styles of paddler. We had creekers, freestylers, SUP’ers, rafters, open canoeists and every type of paddler in between. All enjoying the (mostly) good weather, paddling together and joining in the many clinics.
Palm’s Cheesy & G17′s Simon even turned there hand to Open Canoeing, the results however weren’t as pretty as the drysuits that kept them toasty and dry. They were last spotted swimming off towards Chester when it all went wrong at Town Falls…
We had all three sizes of Dagger’s new Jitsu playboat for people to try. Having being one of the main testers it’s a boat im passionate about. It’s great to see paddlers of all abilities hopping into them and loving how they’re paddling. It was very satisfying seeing people’s grins as they were surfing up the mighty bottom wave.
Katya & myself made the most of the good levels and had a good session in the sun in our Jitsu’s followed by a blast down the river in the Dagger Greens. Now if you ever get a chance to try one of the Green boats I highly recommend it, surprisingly whenever you get to a rapid they really come to life, great fun! You can’t help but sprint in them though
Thanks to everyone who came and said hello, if you were there check the gallery below to see if you got snapped by us
This month I’m going to show you how to Loop in shallow holes.
Being from the UK, one of the first obstacles I had to overcome was how to do the moves in shallow features. It’s an invaluable skill to have for many reasons.
Getting normal loops is relatively easy in modern short boats but many people still struggle when the holes aren’t very deep.
Ordinarily on the loop you stamp down hard, get the boat as deep as possible and then jump up with your arms to get the height and go as big as you can.
Shallow spots require a very different approach however.
Step One: In a shallow hole, you take as little speed as possible going into the seam line.
Step Two: When the nose touches the seam try and catch as small amount of water as you can whilst still getting vertical.
To do this back paddle and use your core stomach muscles to keep the boat straight as you approach the seam line and then continue these little micro strokes to maintain control whilst initiating the bow in the green water.
Step Three: Once vertical you want to effectively do a flat-water loop but in the hole. Push down as hard and snappily as you can with the back of both paddle blades.
Step Four: When you’re body is as far forwards as it can go, grab the water with the power face of your paddle blades and open your body out like the opposite of a sit up as snappily & aggressively as you can.
This will kick your feet out in front of you and push the nose of the boat back into a front surf.
Tips & Tricks
You can practice this motion on dry land by lying on your back with your legs in the air then try and kick out as hard as you can. On dry land the idea is just to get a feel of this movement.
Spending some time perfecting your flat-water loops will help you with these skills too.
When you have this shallow hole looping technique perfected, the way you finish the loop by grabbing the water and kicking out can also be applied to finishing Phonic’s and Mc’Nastys and is a very very good way of forcing the boat to keep straight, and retaining the feature. For competing this skill is invaluable as it enables you to force moves to keep straight when the pressure is on.
How the gear I use helps me…
Out with my Dad on the Washburn in my beloved Jitsu, toasty warm in my Palm Spark suit. Life is good!
What’s also going to help your freestyle progression is using the right tools for the job.
I’m very fortunate to be using what I consider the best equipment possible for what I do so I’d like to give some of the stuff I use a little shout out!
I use Dagger’s new Jitsu kayak that I was involved in the design process of, so it’s pretty much my dream boat. One of the reasons is its slicy ends. It makes it easy to initiate the nose and cut it in to the water whilst keeping a volumous poppy centre that give you that much needed lift to get big air. Having precise but short back end gives you the freedom to play in shallow features without hitting the bottom on the landings and pull stuff though quicker and easier in normal holes.
Being a very cold winter for play boating I’ve managed to paddle the whole winter through thanks to having my Palm Spark suit to wear, it’s much lighter and less restrictive than ordinary dry suits and feels a lot like wearing a top deck only much warmer with great freedom of movement!
Good luck trying this one out, and enjoy the coming spring!
This last two weeks I joined up with Adventurer Richard Matheson Harphram to explore Morocco by bike, taking in as much of the country as we could in our two-week stay.
I know this is a kayaking blog and this was a cycling trip but growing up kayaking everyday has given me a big love of two things: Adventure & Pushing myself. Trying something new like this was a chance to push myself onwards and get myself in the right frame of mind and physical shape for the Kayak season ahead.
Our final route was from Marrakech over Col du Tichka to Ouarzazate, then onto Merzouga. We hopped on a bus to skip the long boring Desert road taking us back to Ouarzazate. Then back on bikes over Col du Tichka again, across and up the Ourika Valley and finally back to Marrakech. See our loop here: Our Route
For the trip Palm supplied me with dry-bags to keep all my important stuff safe & intact as you can see on the front of my bike below & the very useful Tsangpo one piece thermal suit to keep me warm at night!
Personal Highlights
Climbing up the 2260m Col du Tichka pass, (60 miles of very steep climbing): It was so hard work on our 40kg+ laden bikes, but at the same time the way you seemed to get higher & higher without really noticing and the feeling of satisfaction once at the top made the previous 60 miles of slogging worthwhile.
Cycling 96.5miles on day 5 and realising my legs could keep going on and on, I felt super human that day.
The first “hardest” day, going towards the turnaround point of Merzouga (where the Sand Dunes are), darkness falling, no town in sight, and a ferocious head wind for the last 30 mile. Realising you just need to grit your teeth together and keep pedalling.
Cycling back over Col du Tichka, we were cheered on by thousands of French students taking part in a Renault 4 rally as we climbed to the din of honking of horns, shouts of ‘bon courage’ and ‘respect’ then after we celebrated again at the summit we found this camp spot almost at the summit. I walked up to the ridge to see what was on the other side and the view just dropped away a sheer 1000ft or more to the empty valley below. I felt so alive & in touch with the world peering out into the wind.
The second “hardest” day, after camping at the paradise camp spot mentioned above. During the night we got nailed by heavy wind all night then in the morning we awoke to find snow, sleet and hail. Nothing we could do other than cycle lower down until it warmed up, we had all the clothes we had with us on, but our hands in little cycle mitts and my knees in skimpy cycle shorts were in bits as the hail & snow slashed them on the way down. When we found the cafe and warmed up a bit it was one of the fondest moments of the trip as Rich sobbed about his Chilblains and I huddled with my knees tucked up under my coat drinking mint tea.
Seeing a country by bike I really appreciated the distances between the landmarks, noticed all the details, how friendly the locals were & the way personalities changed region by region and also the sheer variety of different landscapes here was unreal. Spectacular was a word I said far too much on this trip:-)
Hospitality: One of the best bits was our second to last day. We were cycling along and loads of amazing metal sculptures caught my attention. The artist Abdullah (sorry if I spelt your name wrong) invited us to stay at his. So we cycled on, uphill another 15 miles then freewheeled all the way back to his gallery where he shoved us and our bikes into his van and took us to his home. We spent the night getting recounted many stories from his fascinating life. From trekking through the jungle to get into Burkina Faso to evade the border check to his 7 month project of revamping a old VW surf bus shell to a pristine model and many hilarious Arab jokes. In the morning he took us to the local market and bought us breakfast before sending us on our way back to Marrakech!
Off-Road trails: We actually did have a great time riding down some of the trails just off the road. The bikes came into their own off the road, even if they were an absolute bitch slogging along on the tarmac
Camels: They are such a good creatures, watching them eat with their funky gurns and expressions is like watching a great comedy, i loved socialising with them.
Desert: I’ve never seen such beautiful sunrises or such a surreal landscape. (Or more frustrating cycling).
People we met: So many intriguing people we met along the way.
Wild Camping: We stayed in some magnificent spots! Sleeping out under the stars, in often remote spots, lying next to the ground often felt me better than when we were in Hotels, (apart from the lack of shower). You sleep so good outside.
Overall the trip pushed me harder than I expected, threw up experiences I never anticipated, showed me a new culture and a amazing country and I got to really push myself. Together with Rich I feel like we saw & did an incredible amount in only 13 days.
Realisations/ Lessons Learnt
After slogging hard for a few hours when you stop & eat just a simple Orange, Mango or an Avocado, it tastes sensational. All your senses are enhanced when your working hard.
Simple things like sitting down for a few moments or sleeping in a real bed for a night sometimes feel exquisite.
When you think you can go no more, just stay in the moment, you can always do one more push as it turns out. Everything passes.
When everything goes tits up, laugh about it. Everything fixes itself sooner or later.
I really felt sometimes like my body was singing, you can push so much harder than you thought you could when your really in tune.
Intuition: Always listen what your heart tells you, it is never wrong. Particularly when I didn’t follow rich on the trail that led to him getting 15 punctures in one go
All hard exercise is a purifier, you feel so good, clean & happy when your work hard with your body. I will keep this up for sure. Life is dull & blunt when you don’t physically push yourself.
Finish! Going Home!
Joke of the trip
From Abdullah the Scupltor/ Artist, translated from Arabic:
An old man is writing to his son in prison, “Son you know how I love growing tomatoes, but now i’m getting old I’m not sure I can dig the field well enough this year to plant any, I wish you weren’t in prison, I hope you get out soon so that we can have our beautiful fresh tomatoes every year…”
The son writes back “Dad, shhh, don’t dig the field up that’s where I buried all the bodies…”
The next day the field is thoroughly dug up and ploughed by a group of Police searching for bodies after a tip-off from the Prison Guards…;-)
We had originally aimed to cover 1000miles, however we’d taken ‘Fat Bikes” with massive tires in the hope we’d be able to ride on the Sand and hadn’t taken into account the weight or resistance of these bikes. So our 1000miles soon got turned into a shorter loop on 525miles giving us time to see more and spend more time off-road.
Our final route was from Marrakech over Col du Tichka to Ouarzazate, then onto Merzouga. We hopped on a bus to skip the long boring Desert road taking us back to Ouarzazate. Then back on bikes over Col du Tichka again, across and up the Ourika Valley and finally back to Marrakech. Our Route
Thanks to my personal sponsors:
Palm Equipment, Teva Shoes, Dagger Kayaks & AT paddles along with Salsa for the loan bike for the trip.
With the launch of Dagger’s new Jitsu playboat we wanted to give you some new skills to work on in your shiny new freestyle ripping machines.
Over the course of this year Katya and me will be producing monthly how to videos to help you progress your freestyle skills.
The first one here is on how to do one of our favourite moves: the Phonics Monkey.
What is it?
It’s a 360 degree vertical spin linked into a front loop.
It looks very spectacular, is one of the highest scoring moves and also one of the hardest to master.
How to do it?
Step One: Set Up
Step One: Start up nice and high on the foam pile. Turn the boat so that it’s lined up straight to the oncoming flow. Let yourself drift down towards the seam line with a little bit of edge held on.
Step Two: Initiation
Step Two: Just before you reach seam line reach across the bow with a crossbow stroke to initiate the 360 pirouette.
Step Three: Looking Ahead
Step Three: As soon as you’ve initiated the crossbow pirouette, start looking ahead of the boats rotation.
Step Four: Spotting Upstream & Throwing Loop
Step Four: When you’re getting nice and vertical and your nearing the end of the 360 you want to spot a marker, could be a tree or a slalom pole, anything that is directly upstream of you.
Step Five: The Landing
Step Five: Kicking your Feet Out
Step Five: When you see that marker jump up on your toes into your standard looping position & then kick your feet out straight ahead of you in the direction of that upstream marker. The more aggressive the better at this point.
Get some forwards strokes in to stay in the hole.
How to make sure it scores?
Try to start at a low angle and build up continuously to vertical. Timed correctly this will give you the biggest air and make sure the judges like it.
Make sure you keep the loop nice and straight at the end. (Spot your marker & Kick your feet out in front when you finish the Loop)
Things to watch out for:
Going vertical too soon.
Taking too much speed into the move (that just means you’ll go vertical too soon.)
Reaching out too far on the cross bow. Again this will mean you go vert too soon or hurt your shoulder.
Finally
Get out there and have a go, be patient it will probably be a gradual process mastering this move, but very satisfying when you get it.
This last half year with Katya in the UK I wanted to show her as much of the UK’s good bits as I could think of, and also show her where I started kayaking and some of my favourite places in the UK.
We love being out in the wilds, away from cities so I really wanted to go to Scotland with her this time to paddle some of the Classics, see John O’Groats, do some cycling and just see as much of the wild as we could.
Paddling
The main goal of our trip wasn’t really kayaking which was just as well because when we first arrived there was no water at all but the last few days of the trip we were hammered by rain so got to paddle the Etive then met up with Dennis Newton and his creeking camp kids and paddled the Orchy at great levels the next day before heading home.
I enjoy river running for the beauty surrounding it but I don’t desire to push it very far, it’s just not my thing. I’m not really scared of it, or feel out of my skill level, it’s just that it feels that in order to get the same buzz as I do for freestyle i’d have to go pretty crazy and I don’t wish to take those risks. The reward for me isn’t big enough and if I were to hurt myself too much so that I couldn’t do freestyle or the other sports I love i’d really regret it.
That said because it was so beautiful here, I loved the Etive, especially the classic Right Angle drop. The Orchy was actually a really sweet surprise. With the rain we had it was quite like the Nile style of big water. I only wished i was in my playboat as there were some fabulous waves & holes that would of ben great to surf properly…next time I guess.
Landscape & Animals
Scottish Animals & Wildlife have to be pretty tough, given the climate & weather, but I think this also gives them a character and personality. We were lucky that we got to see so many wild and also tame animals classic to Scotland on our trip.
We got to socialise with Ponies, Sheep & Highland Cows here, I love seeing them out in the wild heather & fields, I only wish they weren’t going to be eaten! There so beautiful and intelligent creatures, you can really see something in there eyes.
We also got to see Red Squirrels which you don’t often see in England along with many kinds of birds.
Scotland has some very harsh weather and I think this brings out it’s beautiful landscape even more. We got to enjoy the Autumn colours on the trees all around, the towering mountains, barren expanses of heather and the storm battered coasts.
The other aspect that was good was that each night we managed to park up next to some quiet Loch or river and wake up each day to fantastic views of Scottish nature.
I just think of all the places our Van’s been now, it really has seen some fantastic sights in the last 3 years!
John O’Groats
I’d never been there and it’s somewhere I always wanted to go, so with freezing weather and howling winds we got ourselves to the very edge of the UK.
We got to what was signposted as the tip but after checking my map on the iPhone it looked like we needed to venture further so we walked along the coast until we got to the cliffs and lighthouse that mark the true edge.
It’s like another planet there and you could barely stand from the power of the wind, really made you feel invigorated looking out to sea, leaning your full weight into the wind.
Aviemore
I’d actually been here once before; when I was studying Adventure Sports at college we’d had a week long winter mountaineering course here and remembered it as quite spectacular.
We got some good cycling in around the Lochs on the trails here and saw a centre that looked after Reindeer, it caught our eye actually because there was a Red Squirrel eating in front of it.
We found we’d missed the seeing the guided tour to look at them in the hills so decided to hike up one of the mountains looking for the Reindeer herds ourselves. We didn’t find them but the view from the top was worth it anyhow.
Back Home
Luckily for us we live quite close to North Wales and the Lake District so we spent the rest of the Winter exploring & paddling some of my favourite areas and getting to visit the play spots I grew up paddling: the Dee, Tryweryn and a few trips to HPP & Hurley.
Below is just a few un-edited clips of us testing out the Prototype Dagger Jitsu’s
We actually have a pretty sick set up here in the UK to become a top playboater. You only really have to look at our current crop of paddlers to see that though…(Bren, James Weight, James Benns
As well as kayaking I’ve been giving talks to school kids to get them excited and inspired for life in the outdoors, which at first was very nerve racking but actually has been very rewarding and enjoyable. More on the project HERE
Now though the new year has come and I’m looking forward to heading off with Katya for some new adventures and a fresh season of competition!
all shown on live french TV. From the freestylers Quim Fontane Maso, Mathieu Dumoulin and Tim Biere’nard lasted the longest providing some fantastic entertainment as Quim & Tim’s ferocious battle eventually knocked them both out but none of the freestylers made it to finals. In the end the final was all down to serious racers and Raphael Thiebaut took the win.
Before here training & competitions had felt like they’re going well on the way to Worlds, and coming 5th here I discovered a few weakness’s and areas I need to improve with plenty of time to solve them. We have a new regime for me and i’m looking forward to seeing how i can improve before the event in Sort, Spain in a few weeks where quite likely we’ll see the same main rivals + Dane Jackson all of us fighting for good prize money so I imagine it’s going to be tough 
