What's on
The month of May was extremely busy, at the same time fun and educational.
The first week was spent in Wales attending the Anglesey Symposium: marvellous!
Then transferring to the Ticino River for the Open Canoe course conducted by Phil Hadley.
Hot on its heels was the BCU L1 coaching course run by Phil Hadley and

Ashley St.John-Claire on Lake Maggiore.
It was a perfect fit of emotions, advancement and new experiences!

For the month of June we have loads of courses in store:
the first weekend will be dedicated to the basic skills course on the 1st  and 2nd;
the following weekend, 8 and 9 June, is assigned to an advanced course;
lastly a Greenland rolling meet is planned to take place on 15 and 16 June.
There are still places available on each of the courses. The meeting place is at Cerro di Laveno on the Lombardia side of Lake Maggiore. A great excuse to improve your Italian ;-)
If interested, don’t hesitate to contact us!

To end a month replete with courses and learning activities, we will be away for a whole week in Skopelos, Greece to complete the Moderate Water Endorsement under the expert guidance of the evergreen Phil Hadley. The crystal waters of the Sporades are the location for a trio of BCU courses - 3 star sea kayak level organised by Neil McAra of Kayaking Skopelos.
There are still places available; an excellent opportunity to improve kayaking skills whilst holidaying in the sun... Contact us or Neil for more info.

Kayaking snippets
Paddling is an activity that is recreational and athletic at the same time; straightforward but complex. There’s the contact with the water, cadence of the paddle, measured respiration, tiredness... With time, I have come to realise that paddling is fun not only in a kayak but also in a canoe! I’ve also learnt that switching from one kind of paddle to the other – double blade Greenland paddle to single blade Canadian paddle - helps improve one’s paddling technique.
This is one of the reason why the BCU syllabus for Level 1 Coach requires competency in more than one type of paddle: the instructor should be able to coach in any type of craft, transferring and improving kayaking skills to the canoe and vice versa...

Call of the Inuit
Greenland Manhattan: I’ve fallen in love with this cartoon!
It is the perfect union of art, history and literature, making one dream and reflect.
It’s beautiful! The French graphic author, Chloé Cruchaudet, tells the true story of little Minik, the Inuit uprooted from his native Greenland and taken to Manhattan by the explorer Robert Peary... This book was launched in Italy in 2010 by the eclectic Bolognese publishing house Coconino Press, specialising in graphic novels by renowned artists. This graphic novel portrays a bitter-sweet story, underscored by the magisterial use of watercolours that comes to the fore in its portrayal of the landscapes of the Arctic north...
Minik is an unforgettable character!

Over the horizon

Albert Gambina e Dorian Vassallo are a Maltese kayaking duo that are like-minded.
Since 2008 they have carried out long sea-crossings with their K2 in aid of charitable causes: this year they are embarking on a new venture to collect funds for the Malta Community
Chest Fund. In the last week of June they will leave Malta and follow the route that St Paul travelled when he left this island for Rome: 600 nautical miles towards Sicily and then north through the Straits of Messina and thence along the Tyrrhenian coast to the Italian capital,

via the Tiber, completing the voyage at Castel Sant'Angelo. Weather permitting, they are hoping to complete this endeavour within 30 days. You can track their progress
along the route on their Facebook page Kayak for Charity – Malta!