We caught-up with Dean Jordan and Amy Smith from Leeds Dock Paddle Boarding & The White Rose Canoe Club at their Community Paddle Day in Rodley which is just one event in their busy calendar.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Hello, I'm Dean Jordan. I'm the White Rose Canoe Club's training officer and events organiser
00:04and also Leeds.paddle sports head of paddles. I'm Amy Smith and I am the instructor at Leeds.paddleboarding
00:11and also the White Rose Canoe Club. It's yet another Leeds community paddle event. There should
00:16be around 25, 30 of us getting on the water. Weather may have put some people off because
00:21it is forecast to rain during the event, so we'll see. Then we've got an upcoming Star Wars paddle
00:27on the best day ever, May the 4th, which actually falls on a Sunday this year. We've run different
00:32events for over the last couple of years and yeah, when people go past the walk-in on the
00:37side, they're like, oh, what are you doing it for? And we're like, do you know what, we're
00:40just doing it for some fun and hopefully it will make you smile because, you know, it's
00:44just nice to smile and enjoy the day and enjoy what we've got here in Leeds. You know, it's
00:50really nice to be able to have the water space. So yeah, it's really good fun. He's trying
00:55to bring all the local paddle communities together. There's several Facebook groups,
00:59commercial organisers, canoe clubs. It's trying to bring them all together, get to meet other
01:04people because usually they know someone in each little element, so it's just try and
01:09bring it all together. And it's a good way to share knowledge and stuff like that as
01:11well for keeping safe on the water. So it's, yeah, it's a really nice community group and
01:17we get to make loads of new friends. We've got White Rose Canoe Club at Roundy Park, which
01:21is community based. Then on the commercial side, we've got the Leeds Dock paddle boarding
01:25down at Royal Armouries, which is a totally different aspect because we're mainly paddle
01:29boarding rather than the canoe kayak. But it is all about mental health and wellbeing and
01:34just getting out there and making new friends. Always great for that.
01:38White Rose Canoe Club at Roundy Park, we've got as annual challenge day. And during that process
01:43we'll be getting, we'll be receiving from Paddle UK as champion club mark, which means that
01:47we've got all the accreditations, all the right ticks in the boxes, all the correct staff
01:52qualified and in date. So everything ticks and we're on the top mark with that. Promptly
01:58followed by Star Wars Paddle on May the 4th. It's, yet again, a great paddle clean-up events
02:04with Clearwater Campaign. First week of June, we've been doing several litre picks on the local
02:10waterways, predominantly around the Leeds City Centre area, Hunslet. It's always required
02:16anyway. So it's always great to do that. Moving on after that, we've got Caledonian Canal Adventure
02:23Paddle, which is for charity. That's coast to coast. So from Fort William up to Inverness.
02:28People are always welcome to join us for parts or the whole of it.
02:31From my point of view, Leeds Dock is one of my favourite places to paddle. I really like
02:35the urban sort of paddle boarding. It's great because you get to see like the bridges and
02:40all the buildings and you get to see Leeds from a different aspect because you're on the
02:44water and it looks completely different. And as you're paddling through the town centre,
02:49you'd like, you'd never realise you were kind of in town centre. And if you can go on
02:53a night time, we do do night time paddles and all the bridges are all lit up on a night time
02:57and it is just stunning.