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Paddling Venues

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Paddling Venues

There are a suprisingly large amount of fun places to paddle in and around the Watford area. They took a while to find, but we now have a variety of places that we can choose to paddle on to give us experience on different kinds of features.

Here is a list of places that we paddle regularly and other local spots that we are yet to explore:

Watford Pool - Watford

During winter, NKC uses the old indoor swimming pool in watford for flatwater training. The pool sessions are every Sunday evening (except for the 3rd sunday in the month, when it is the Polo session >:-/ ) during winter. The pool is a very useful facility to have, it allows us to practise our weaker playboating moves in nice warm water in the middle of the freezing winter, so we don't have to put up with a lot of capsizes in very cold water outside.

Bury Lake - Rickmansworth Aquadrome

This is where we paddle for our flat water "training" sessions every wednesday and sunday evening during summer. The Nomad Kayak Club owns access to this lake and members are allowed to use it for free whenever they want (within opening hours). The lake sessions usually last for about 2 hours and often start with us from the FreestyleFrenzy group being left to our own devices, while the rest of the club paddle around the lake practising flat-water strokes and manoeuvres.

Rickmansworth Weir - River Colne

This weir is on the river Colne, just after it passes through the Grand Union Canal. It can create a variety of different sized holes by the removal of different numbers of boards from one of five gates. The weir has a fairly large drop for the size of the river, so it creates a pourover type hole which is good for cartwheeling, blasting and variations of those two moves, Loops are probably just about possible too when it has formed a large hole, however there is a small lip just behind the green water that if you leapt to far forward, you might accidentally hit with the back of the boat. The biggest problem with this spot is fishermen. For years they have tried to claim that they own the river where it flows over the weir, this is not actually true, they own the river from about 30m downstream of the weir. We have been told that we are allowed to paddle on the weir and the strech of water below it, until the metal walkway that passes over the river. There have been several meetings arranged to discuss the access to this section of the river colne, and apparently, while paddlers have turned up to every single meeting, the fishermen have never sent anyone to represent them.

The Fisheries - Harefield

This is in Harefield on the Grand Union Canal. There is an outlet from a sewage treatment works that blasts a lot of water into the canal out of two tunnels (it does not contain raw sewage, only cleaned water). It was originally used for slalom practice by another club and there are gates set up around the tunnels, but these are moveable. Normally there are no other people using the fisheries and we have it to ourselves. In summer, the amount of water that comes out of the tunnels is very small, but it is a good place to introduce beginners to their first bit of moving water. In the winter, the tunnel on the left chucks out the most water and when it is big enough will produce a fairly nice "wave". Although it is barely surfable, you can actually drop into the green water a bit like you can in a hole and i have seen someone front loop in it before. The right-hand tunnel usually produces less water, but it creates a much nicer wave/hole. It is retentive enough for flatspinning, but it is not very deep, only about 10cm, so you can't really do a lot more than spin and surf on it. Very occasionally, the right-hand tunnel, for a matter of minutes, will chuck out much more water than it usually does, and it can create a narrow but tall wave that sits just outside the tunnel in the deeper water. The wave is about 4ft tall, but do not expect to see it, I go to the fisheries on most saturday mornings for a few hours at a time throughout the winter, and i have only seen this wave once for about 8minutes. The canal around the fisheries is often used for fishing, but i have never had any problems with the fishermen, as long as you stay under the area with slalom gates up you should be fine because they can't actually cast their lines out there anyway.

-Directions To The Fisheries (word doc)-

Nene Whitewater Centre - Northampton

This is a 300m long artificial whitewater course that is usually open all year round, unless the area is under extreme flood conditions. The centre offers a variety of features to play around on.