Confused Instruction

Yesterday went for a paddle in the above.

No! Not the Audi!! A red canoe like the one on the right!!!

As part of our two star course we went along to Whitewater Canoe Centre in Shepperton (who's blog the above picture comes from, and yes that is a real accident!).

We were doing the canoe as distinct from kayak bits of the BCU course - and we had a different, new, canoe instructor instead of the usual kayak instructor. It was a lot of fun as always and we enjoyed ourselves even the getting wet bit (ok, one of our number wasn't so keen on jumping into the murky waters and stayed resolutely dry) and we did everything asked by our (canoe) instructor.

But she failed us. This led to more than a little muttering and grumbling into beers down the pub later over in Parson's Green - almost a mini rebellion.

The problems were three fold: partly the reasons given were trivial (wearing t-shirts rather than fleeces - well it is July!), partly because she wasn't that brilliant (my rescues worked first time while she took three goes to show how to do it) but mostly we were used to the laid back it looks fine no problem attitude of the kayak instructor.

A course has a style you pick up on the first session which sets the tone, and changing it leads to confusion about what is appropriate and then anger from students that feel their hard work is not appreciated.

We'll see what the kayak instructor has to say about this on Tuesday - I'm sure it will be mentioned!