Fancy-dress paddle boarding in Rodley

National World - LocalTV

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.

Transcript

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.

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