Members Paddling: Grant, Geoff and Martin
Report: Periodically the club gets requests for support for events, often fund raising, such as open water swimming. The request in this case was to help with the kayaking section of a personal sponsored challenge by David Miller (see https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/themighty333) . David was a youth international rugby player who was paralyzed from the shoulders down in a rugby accident 30 years ago. The difficulties he has overcome have been immense e.g. he is unable to turn his body which makes transfer from wheelchair to kayak extraordinarily difficult, not to mention paddling without any form of body rotation using only the arms.
The challenge was to complete 300 miles using a hand pedalled bike, 30 miles on a tandem S.O.T. kayak and 3 miles walking on a frame and our task was to help with 3*10 mile days on kayaks operating each day from Luss. With us were both experienced paddlers and complete novices.
The weather was extremely kind with a lot of sunshine and the Loch, as ever, was beautiful.
David and his partner were surprisingly fast and effort was required to simply keep up. The company was excellent and the paddle each day was over very quickly, in part because there were no lunch breaks as David was unable to get off/on the kayak. An excellent three days which, in these apparently selfish, insular times, reinforced my rosy spectacled view that there are an awful lot of wonderful, kind, generous, warm hearted folk anxious to make the world a better place for all.