I’ve had the privilege of spending this week with the Outdoor Education students from New College Telford. A couple of times a year, their lecturers / teachers take them on a residential trip away from the college to spend a chunk of time working on some of the more practical elements of their courses. They had students working on a variety of activities over the course of the week, but I was asked to work on the paddling side of things.

The students were accommodated at a scout hut on the outskirts of Stone in Staffordshire. This gave the walkers easy access to Cannock Chase and the Peak District, while the paddling was expected to take place on the River Trent. However, on inspection at the start of the first morning, it soon became obvious that the recent heavy rain had swollen the river considerably. To be fair, it was not at a dangerous level, and could have been a lot of fun, the speed of the flow wasn’t conducive to a learning environment for new paddlers. So we found ourselves heading onto the Trent and Mersey Canal.

With both canoes and kayaks to get used to, there was a lot to cover. Although many of the skills are transferrable between the two craft, there are often slight differences which take time and practice to get to grips with. Some found switching between the two helped get their heads around the general principles, while others found that it muddled the details. However, their evening assignments involved analysing strokes and comparing a variety of techniques for both canoe and kayak, which helped most to get things straight (in theory, even if not in practice!).

The week was split into two halves. The first group had extensive coaching on Monday and Tuesday. While they were being assessed on Wednesday morning, I made a start working with the second group who progressed towards their assessment on Friday.

The aim had been to give them the opportunity to gain a 2 star award from the BCU (British Canoe Union). This was always going to be a tall order for all the students to make it to this level, but I was quite pleased with the number that did. Due to being restricted to the canal, there were elements of the assessment that we weren’t able to do (particularly the deep water rescues), so they’ll have to have another outing to finish things off at a later date.

It seemed like a long week of paddling on a canal. However, the students were a lot of fun to work with and I hope that some of them will look to develop their paddling further during the rest of their course.