So the long weekend just past was scheduled for the first “Free you Style” event to take place in Kilkenny, sadly a couple of days before the event was to happen the recent very heavy rain fall had washed the weir out and there wasn’t much of a feature left.
As the aim of the free your style day was to encourage and foster an interest for participation freestyle events I had little choice to postpone the event until a further date in the near future.
In contacting the coaches who had volunteered there services for the day they were all really keen to still take part in the event at a later date. I was aware that lots of the people who all set to travel to Kilkenny for the day were still keen to do something regardless of the level so I said that I would run a river trip on the Sunday for the first few who got back to me and would decide what section of the river to use upon seeing the water level on the day.
Sunday morning brought us sunshine and highish but workable levels, we ran a mini rive trip from the Bleach road get on to the weir. We all had a wee chat at the get on and set out what we all wanted to work for the day and set off in good form with every one set to pick up some new skills and brush up on the ones we already had.
A few days back on of the guys from the UKRGB Bren (aka Peakfreak) posted up that there are no videos online that just explain the “double pump” and any that try assume too much previous knowledge from the person looking to learn.
I had being thinking of doing up a few wee how to tutorials but was being a bit lazy about it, I took this as a bit of motivation. I hit a part of the local river two cameras and tripod in hand. Sadly after I had uploaded the footage to my laptop I some lost it all , a fecking disaster so I flew back down to the river with my younger brother Keith “shaky hands” Shanahan and managed to get only 6mins of raw footage before the battery died. I managed to salvage this after all that.
This has kinda inspired me to put a bit of effort in and knock out a few more hoping to improve on the quality.
With the May bank holiday weekend rolling around and there not being any quality water around at all I was going to be around Kilkenny for the weekend. As the sun was shining myself and fellow Kilkenny paddler Mickie Brennan decided to hit up the little known King’s river 5km from Kilkenny city. Its a nice little class 2+/-3 that would be a super little training ground for introduction white water skills. We got back to basics trying to use every little feature available to practice almost everything we could think of, sure it wasn’t the most exciting boating either of us had ever done but with a little bit of competition going on between us to add a competitive element to the day it was good times all round.
Welcome to my little part of the interweb, I know what you are thinking " Ah jayus..........not another fecking blog", sure bear with me and see how it goes.
I will be updating it nice and regular with photos/ stories / random banter & little "how to" guides. Stay tuned it might help you waste some time during the working day.
