We had arranged to meet John and Chris at Leaplish Waterpark, Josh and I were a bit early as we were awake at about 6 am after out night out camping so I thought I would get the canoe ready to go.
None of us had thought to check if there were any requirements to launch the canoe there. Well there ended up being quite a list of things we didnt have, Public liability insurance, Canoeing certificates. This was obviously not going to go well and Leaplish had suggested trying the scout camp further up so Josh and I drove up to have a look. By the time we got back John and Chris had arrived and John was sporting a "nice" new camouflage hat.
We decided to give up on Kielder and drive over to Catcleugh Reservoir. We had no better luck there as there was nowhere suitable to launch the canoe without either trespassing or tearing the bottom out of the canoe. After spending an hour driving backwards and forwards we gave up and headed of to find a quiet out of the way spot on another large lake.
After checking out a few places we found a nice little cove with a perfect place for getting in and out the canoe.
Our main aims were to check how much weight we could carry without the canoe sitting too low in the water plus just to get a little bit of practice in before we head off to Scotland. It was quite a walk from the cars so we decided to use Josh as ballast instead of carrying all the camping kit down. Everyone had a great time and we paddled round this little cove for a couple of hours.
The canoe was brilliant and could obviously take far more weight than we would be carrying but the paddles I bought that converted from a double ended kayak paddle to two single ended canoe paddles I thought were rubbish ( nobody else seamed to mind) they felt pretty sturdy but the blades on the ends are about the size of tea spoons, I started of trying these double ended but they splashed a lot of water in the boat so single ended seamed to work better.
John and I rocked side to side and the canoe showed no signs of tipping over, certainly not on the calm waters where we will be going anyway. We think we will be able to borrow a couple of canoe paddles to give them a try before going to Scotland.
We forgot to fit the 2 blades on the bottom which help stop the canoe drifting sideways and I think we all agreed that this would be very difficult to paddle solo, there is obviously a knack to it , something which none of us seamed to have
Another day with a rocky start but everything turned out ok
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