Crossing Scotland’s Ranoch Moor by canoe is a classic British open boat journey. there’s a bit of everything – portaging, lining, sailing, and even paddling! All of it is across beautiful Scottish moorland, and much of the time we’ll be miles from roads or civilization. Next week, Barry and I are spending 3 days canoeing from Loch Ba eastwards to somewhere near Loch Tummel. We’re joining Dave Rossetter and Scott Simon, both very experienced canoeists. both are BCU level 5 coaches & Dave runs ‘Standing Waves‘, one of Scotland’s leading canoe & kayak centres. They are hundreds of times more experienced than us in canoes and we’re happy to know we are in good company. I’ll be filming the journey for my upcoming canoeing DVD, and hoping we can keep up & keep upright!! The following weekend we’ll attend the Scottish open canoe symposium at Glenmore Lodge, where we’ll enjoy being students and learning a few things about canoeing. On Saturday night, I’ll be showing a preview of some of my canoeing footage from my upcoming DVD.

but……. back to our preparations for all this excitement. Barry and I have only been together in a tandem canoe 3 times so we thought we’d better get a bit of practice before next week. Today we enticed some friends ( who happen to be good canoeists & coaches !) with promises of homemade chocolate cake and a pub meal. But first they had to run down the river Dee with us! Jim and John obliged and we had a great day paddling about 5 or 6 miles down the grade 2/3 river, stopping to play at many of the features. The recent bad weather disappeared leaving us with a wonderful sunny day – who could ask for more?

Sorry the pictures aren’t very good quality – I was testing out a video camera which also takes still photos. I now see why it’s marketed as a video camera, not a photo camera!!

Thanks to Jim Bradley for a couple of photos of Barry and I surfing a wee wave!

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