We all ‘Go Canoeing’ for a day

To help celebrate the British Canoe Union being in its 75^th year, the Club teamed up with Kayaking London and Friends of Cremorne Riverside to host an open day during ‘Go Canoeing Week’ on Sunday 8 May. 

The day was a great success, lots of people rocked up to find out about padding and how they can get involved – in part due to some last minute fancy bunting and car-stickering at Cremorne and one particular mug standing outside of Imperial Wharf station for half a day in full wet gear!

That aside, the unpredicted nice weather also helped a great deal in raising the number of attendees, as well as the promise of some delicious cakes in our bake sale and the chance of bagging some pretty sweet prizes in our raffle.*

Clive Whitton from Canoe England also came along with some nifty new tech for us all to play with – a couple of kayaking ergo machines. These are the mutts nuts – and – are a lot harder than they look, which pretty much everyone who tried them would agree too (so long as you gave them enough time to catch the breath afterwards!).

Chelsea Kayak Club had its own stand and displayed a range of safety and paddling equipment to talk through, as well as details and images from some of the exciting trips we’ve managed to cram in since the Club was founded last year. Kayaking London did an amazing job of taking out three complete beginner’s taster sessions on the Thames and we’ve no doubt that we’ll be seeing some of those people again as members, once they have discovered their sea legs.

We also had an impressive display of deep water rescue skills from the young people who use the activity centre, many of whom stayed around to help out on the other stands and chat to all the interested people.

All together, the sunshine and enthusiasm of all the people involved help make this a really enjoyable and fun day – and one I’m sure we’ll repeat again in the future.

Thanks again to all of our supporters and friends who kindly donated prizes for the raffle, the winners drawn from the tub were:

• Emma M (#18) – winning a meal for two at lovely Lots Road Pub & Dining Room
• Ann (#154) – scooped a ‘Discover London Kayaking Experience’ worth £60 from Kayaking London
• Tom (#37) – bagged the Tropical Fruit Basket
• David (#113)– picked up the Michael Buble CD
• Lara (#125) – scored with the collection of PC Games
• Finn G (#132) – London 2012 pin badges and pouch
• Richard H (#93) – secured the paddling ‘must-have’ key cork