OCA white water improvers

OCA white water improvers

Sunday, 20 April 2008 09:05

For two days at the beginning of April five intrepid paddlers braved ice and snow to sharpen existing skills and hopefully learn some new ones as they took part in the OCA White Water Improvers course in the Peak District.

A central location put the course within reach of much more of the country and gave access to some interesting if lesser known rivers without any access problems.

We stayed at the Hollowford Centre, Castleton and on the Saturday morning we were met by our coaches Paul Booker and Adam Evans who talked through what we wanted to learn from the weekend before loading us into the centre Minibus for our first day on the Derbyshire Derwent. Levels were good and we were whisked downstream, stopping at features along the way to practise various manoeuvres.

The day finished at Matlock where we had a go at swimming in the rapids and practised using throwbags.

After a night exploring the pubs of Castleton we were whisked off to the delights of the River Goyt near Stockport. Although this required an extended portage just to get to the river we found some excellent technical rapids and got the chance to practice river leadership as we linked together some of the techniques we had practised the day before.

As we finished it was snowing heavily but all agreed it had been an excellent weekend despite the odd unplanned swim or two.

This was the first time we have run this kind of event in the Midlands- let us know if you’d like to see more of this kind of specialist weekend.