This weekend has been a real treat for me. I have spent the last two days doing paddlesport coaching one to one in Snowdonia in the sunshine – awesome!

Back in March, Oswestry School CCF started running Adventure Education weekends for their cadets. On that trip, I jointly led a couple of days’ hill walking with the cadets. This weekend, two members of the Oswestry School CCF staff led cadets on scrambles around the Snowdon Horseshoe and Tryfan’s north ridge while I had the privilege of paddling with a member of staff new to the school this term. The whole group were based out of Capel Curig Training Camp for the weekend, which put us in the heart of some stunning scenery, and the fine sunny weather was the ‘icing on the cake’.

Andrew has done a fair amount of paddling in the past, but not for several years, and the majority of that had been in kayaks with little in canoes. He is now looking to do his level 1 paddlesport coaching qualification, but needs to pass a new 2 star assessment first. So the aim of our two days was to get Andrew familiar with being back in a boat and to develop skills which, in some cases were a bit rusty, and in others were completely new.

Many of the skills and techniques are universal to paddlesport generally, whilst others need a little modification to suit the individual craft. We spent that whole of Saturday working in canoes, starting off with paddling in tandem, before complicating things slightly by looking at solo paddling strokes. Sunday was spent in kayaks, which was a bit more familiar, but there’s still a lot to learn and practise so that the paddler’s body, boat and blade all work together smoothly.

Andrew was great to work with – eager to learn, hard working and good company. We covered a lot over the course of the weekend, and he now needs to spend some time in both boats drawing everything together. Good luck and enjoy getting out there.