2010 Summer Sessions

Registered Company No 2612775

Hoorah, summer is coming so its time for every one to get down on the river and enjoy paddling without the need for anti-freeze on you spraydeck r de-icer in your shower gel! That also means its time to sign up for the various coaching sessions on offer at the Club over the summer (and pay your membership fees).

The Club’s river coaching session start during the week commencing 19th April (except beginners courses). But the membership renewal night and the opportunity to sign up for whichever session you want to do is on Wed 24th March at Sowerby Bridge Cricket Club (from 7.30).

As ever, the Club’s coaches will be running a series of groups for members, if you want coaching with the Club you’ll need to join one of these groups - depending on what you want to do. Here’s how it works:

Sign up for a group by coming along to the membership and enrolment night on 24th March from 7.30pm.
Session run until late June, (we'll give details of what will be available later in the summer before the end these sessions).
Juniors must paddle in one of these groups, or with their parent.
If the lead coach is not available, they will arrange for another coach to take the session or cancel and tell you when the next session is.
Please remember, our coaches are all volunteers and give up their free time to run these sessions.

We have tried to ensure our sessions cover the widest range of paddlers needs. So here are the details of the session being offered (Lead coach in brackets):

Monday

Adult Beginners - fundamental skills including BCU 1 star award.
BCU 3 Star (White Water Kayak) - will also involve some river trips at weekends.

Tuesday

BCU 2 Star - generic canoe and kayak award for those continuing with 2 star from last year. (Also see below for details of open canoe sessions).
Whale Sharks - varied intermediate paddling session for adults.

Wednesday

Slalom - coaching / training session for those wanting to race.
BCU 2 Star - generic canoe and kayak award for intermediate paddlers. (Also see below for details of open canoe sessions).

Thursday

Tiger Sharks - junior group (not beginners) working on various activities and paddlepower awards
Junior Beginners learning fundamental skills alongside the paddlepwer group.
Play-boating workshop - for those wanting to flip, slip and cartwheel.

For more details about what is involved in each block speak to one of the Club’s coaches or look on the website www.halifaxcanoe.org.uk.

Most sessions will begin in week commencing 19th April.

Beginners sessions will start in early May.

Please note that for safety, coaching and equipment reasons there is a firm limit to the number of people that we can take on each session - but we will do our best to accommodate everyone!

Open Canoe paddling

We are keen to introduce more canoe paddling sessions for club members, particularly aimed at helping people develop the open canoe skills for the 2 star award and potentially progress to the Canoe 3 star award. So new for this year, we will be running some open canoe days throughout the year.

The initial dates will be on the weekends of 10/11 April and 24/25 April - which dates on these weekends will be confirmed on the sign up night and website.

Please note that these are likely to be based at the canal basin rather than at the club. Also there will be a small charge for these sessions as we need to cover the of hiring additional canoes so that every one gets plenty of time in a boat.

Hopefully these session will cover the needs of most Club paddlers, if there is anything we are not covering please let one of the coaches know so we can try and accommodate them during the summer.

We are also able to help any young people wanting to use canoeing towards their GCSE, AS or A level PE or Duke of Edinburgh’s Awards or complete the Cadet Leader Award. If you are interested in these, in the first instance speak to Cliff Speight.

Club Sunday’s

Following the success of these over the winter we are going to try and keep these monthly sessions running over the summer - usually on the second Sunday of the month at the Club (but check the events list to confirm the dates), and running from 10am till about 12noon.

There will be coaches around to help anyone that wants some coaching or encouraging, but these won't be formal coached classes like we run on evenings However, these will not be beginners sessions! You need to competent paddling on the river at the Club. Also remember juniors still need to paddle either with a coach , with parents or under the Club’s Young People’s Paddling policy.

Previous trip reports

Membership Sign Up Night 2010