Re-Starting Canoe Club Activity

Sorry we’ve been silent for so long! As you’ll appreciate, we haven’t been able to run club activities for a while…

…but the Good News is that the latest announcement by the Welsh Government for easing lockdown for sports means that club activities will be able to start again soon!

We’re not ready quite yet (we need to work out exactly how we will operate with social distancing and equipment hygiene), but we hope to make a start in the next few weeks.

Although we haven’t worked out all the details, it’s likely that we’ll be making the following changes to our ‘usual’ procedures:

• All paddlers will need to maintain 2m social distance from anyone not in their own extended households (except in emergencies) – this means that we’ll stick to activities that are well within people’s abilities, to minimise the need of having to perform rescues on one another
• We’ll have to be extra careful in handling equipment, to avoid the possibility of transmitting the virus – this means paddlers handling their own kit as much as possible; parents helping their children; and lots of cleaning – so kitting-up (and storing away) will take even longer than usual!
• We’ll need to avoid travelling in each others’ cars, as much as possible, so we’ll be choosing trip venues that minimise the need for ‘car shuttles’.
• Regrettably, it seems unlikely that we’ll be able to run swimming pool sessions in the autumn. Even if the pool does open, we’ll probably need to restrict numbers to maintain social distancing – and this may not be viable financially. However, we’ll try to do what we can…

Unfortunately, since our finances have been decimated by lockdown, we will have to ask for financial contributions from participants, although we don’t expect these to exceed £10 per person per session (and will do our best to ask for less than this).

Watch this space for further news in the coming weeks…