WestWard!

The Newsletter of the Westel Canoe Club

Once again we are caught up in animal diseases, Blue Tongue again this time, with a 20 mile exclusion zone in the West London area; where? We will find out today when we try the Wey from Blackboys Bridge, and see how far we can get. In fact we got all the way to Walsham gates and no sign of any exclusion tapes and there was also a great deal of narrow boat traffic.

Babs and I went to the Canoexpo at Stoneleigh Park on the 16th Feb; mainly to take back the Touring Trophy shield and collect it again, although we didn’t know for certain we had won it until the second place was announced. This is my fourth trip to Stoneleigh; before as a passenger not navigator and we have always finished up getting lost at the end so it was interesting to see another paddler/driver rushing back and forth and finally turning round just before he got to the main gate; this time we did well due to Babs’ navigating. This is our sixth consecutive win in the competition after four consecutives then a break of three second places when the Canoe Camping Club put in their potential national membership of 500; they now compete on a regional basis which puts them down to our membership bracket. We had 15 paddlers and claimed 19 awards. Our star paddler this year was Ivy Darbon (again) with 844 miles and 300 award points closely followed by husband Bernard with 832 and 300 then Chairman Andrew in third place with 770 and 100. Babs and I were silly in that we didn’t check our mileage before the end of the year then found we were 9 miles short of a Gold award.

The show was definitely a canoeist’s paradise; being run by Brookbank Canoes nothing outside paddling was remotely visible, Babs could not even find a glasses elastic and there were no books to look at or buy. There were just loads of short boats - including one with a waterjet engine and believe me you didn’t have to have very big legs to get in on top of the engine, (lucky it only pumps cold water) but it looked very impressive in the action photos – and Canadians, including Wenonahs with their very light Jensens (37 pounds only) with a price tag of £2004; a big sigh of regret from me. There were several K1s and of course masses of buoyancy aids, jackets, paddles and two beautiful wood strip built boats and veneer touring boats

Does anyone require a really good pair of shorts; an advert in Cycling Weekly could supply the answer “A Dri-Fit polyester spandex for compression and dynamic recovery throughout the bib-short. Comfortable gripper elastic hem at leg opening. Level 3 pro-peloton endorsed two-way stretch chamois is hypo-allergenic, provides moisture management (that’s what we need) and varying foam densities in strategic pressure points with a single layer pre-articulated top sheet for superior high performance.” Talking shorts – wow!!! All that for thirty quid – wow!!!

Further to our proposed half day tours on Saturdays/Sundays I have several in mind so we will need to discuss this. Obviously the way to do this will be to find a reasonably half way turn round point or in the case of an Old Windsor to the club to break off at lunch time at Chertsey. Laleham to Old Windsor could turn round at Bell Weir.

Our first Come and Try It Day is on 26th April starting at noon a second will follow probably in June. These are free of charge and available to all, friends, neighbours, relatives. No bookings necessary. Any club member willing to lend a hand greeting and briefing the public will be welcome; the coaches will do the wet stuff.

Novices who are keen to carry on Canoeing will find we’re organising a course to start on 10th May to get them started. There will be a modest fee for the course.

The clubs new website which is accessible directly and via Google has the dates of all the forth coming touring and other events including a photo gallery and other interesting stuff.

Items for next Newsletter

Typed or hand-written notes are fine, but items on disc should preferably be saved as Plain Text on 3.5" floppy, or email direct to the editor.

Jeff Simmons