Open Canoes

[DeepC]

I live near the River Great Ouse and River Ivel in Bedfordshire. Whilst walking the banks of these mighty rivers on Sunday night I thought that it would be great to have an open canoe that I could use to paddle down the rivers mixing it with the wildlife with my camera.

Anyone got an open canoe that they have finished with?

Anyone got any experience of paddling an open canoe?

DeepC

[surely not]

I have paddled an open canoe out in a National Park in Florida. Very straight forward and great fun. No stability problems and I would have remained dry'z'abone if it hadn't been for the clown I was with!!!

[The Nr Fairy]

I remember going paddling, if that's the right word, in a sea-going kayak at Byron Bay with my niece, all of 11 or 12 at the time

We were the only pair NOT to capsize, until we got within 5 yards of the last beach when I got side on to a wave and rolled it. Damn !

But bloody good fun all the same.

[AerBabe]

I've done a bit of open canoeing (even have a solo certificate in it!). A new canoe will cost you ca. £900+. Look in places like Decathlon at Canada Water. Check out the BCU for more info.

[DeepC]

Aerbabe,

Cheers. I have checked out the BCU page. It seems every UK canoe page on the net spends most of it's bandwidth talking about the lack of a general right to navigate on English Rivers. Negotiating deals with each and every landowner seems to be not a whole lot of fun.

I'm trying to get my Brother interested as well so that we can go halves on a canoe. He's richer than me as he chose a more lucrative discipline of Engineering than me!

Cheers

DeepC

[magpienja]

We have dont lots on the river dee n/wales cheshire in open canoes, my mate got 2 from costco imported from the usa colemans for about £275, which was a very good price, they were 15ft boats we even rigged up small 2hp outboards on them with home made brackets good fun.anything you dont want to get wet put in water proof containers and rope them to the boat in case you go in.

Nick in cheshire.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Canoeing used to be a hobby of mine and when I worked at RAE(B) there certainly used to be a very good canoe club in Bedford. There's an artificial whitewater course out on a flood relief channel in the country park out at Cardington as well that we used to do slalom racing on also.

I've not been there for years, but it used to be on the river just out of the centre of town in a redbrick building with a sort of cafe arrangement on the top floor. Presumably they'll be in some kind of local directory. Presumably they'll do beginners courses - it doesn't take all that long to be reasonably competent in charge of an open Canadian.

I had some very happy evenings paddling on the Bedford Ouse after a hard day's wind tunnel testing out at Thurleigh.

G

[surely not]

now that's novel. You can get your wind tested can you?

[Genghis the Engineer]

Yep, you can still see the tunnel I was working in on the southerly of the two old RAE Bedford sites. A 450,000 cu.ft pressurised wind tunnel in which I spent many happy hours running a stainless steel 1:18 scale Eurofighter up to about 2.5 Mach in what I think was an 8'x8' section - biggest such beast in Europe.

Yet another marvellous British asset decommissioned by short sighted beancounters. So what if it burned 70MW, we had our own set of pylons from the power station and it allowed us to generate test data that couldn't be produced anywhere else in Europe.

G

[uy707]

Rented once a canoe for about an afternoon and paddled across one of the numerous small and welcoming lakes dotting parts of Wisconsin in 1991. Was great, and the canoe made of light alloy was very easy to handle.
Alain