Today was the Kayak training day. Four of us headed to Castle Semple Loch this morning to go through some Kaya safety training to ensure Health and Safety compliance when performing bird counts on the rivers. Unfortunately we had to leave Gillian behind manning the office but next time…

Kayaking is a perfect way to quickly survey the length of our waters, assessing problems, diffuse pollution sources and count the piscivorous birds at this time of the year. We did this last year and would have started this again a week or two ago but felt it best to wait for the training as it was flagged up in our H&S review.

Muir and Struan afloat at Castle Semple Loch

Now that we are all aware of the dangers and reasonably competent and confident in our abilities, we will head out any day now to start counting.
A huge thanks to John our Kayak trainer from Clyde Muirsheil Region Park’s Castle Semple Outdoor Centre for looking after us so well.
Here’s a few photos of the day’s spills and thrills. We all thoroughly enjoyed the day and even came home sunburnt.

A strong breeze made the inflatable a bit more difficult to handle but we managed to get the hang of it. Here Muir and Gordon are paddling in perfect unison.

Well we all knew how this would end

….and here’s what happened.

The only person to stay dry today…