– 10/05/08 – Youth Freestyle Boulters

– 11/05/08 – Brookbank Warwickshire Demo Day



The Plas-Y-Brenin expedition symposium OR ‘How to Poo in the woods!’

Funny goings on in deepest Wales last weekend.

Groups of people stood in circles whittling wood, small trenches being dug, buckets of dirty water being filtered and Dave Mamby being… Dave Mamby. This was the second year for the PYB expedition symposium and the staff team lead by Pete Catterall had got together a great range of presentations and activities for the 100 or so attendee’s.

As the leading sponsor of the paddle sport department we got involved with demo’s of equipment, advise on boats and also how to get sponsorship for trips and methods of funding.

The best bits:

Bison Bushcraft teaching how to prepare fish and then cooking and eating all in the Ray Meres style – their knife workshop and fish and loaves demo’s were by far the most popular of the weekend.

Loel Collins teaching people how to use the toilet in the wilds – if you cook it and eat it then at some point…! Loel gave folk the low-down (literally) and also advise on vaccinations and water filtration.

The slide shows on destinations around the world - by Deb Pinniger (Gabon and Montenegro), Rosie Powell and Loel Collins (Open boating in Alaska) Olly Sanders (Greenland from the water and the rock faces) and Dave Mamby (the re-made Everest kayak expedition film). Dave needs a special mention for managing to simultaneously be in the bar and presenting at the same time!

And the worst bits:

The technical hic-ups. Part and parcel of presentations with the old adage –“ well it was working fine yesterday”.

The horizontal rain that didn’t really fill the local rivers enough to paddle – The bush craft teams Tepee stayed fixed down though!

The four drive with trailer to get home

Over the months to come we will be featuring more by the PYB staff including top-tips and techniques. They are also our first Safety and Rescue test centre - more details of this project here soon.


CanoeExpo Update 2008

Brookbank Canoes decided it was time to give the UK paddling public something fresh in the name of CanoeExpo. Imagine a paddling store on a similar scale to an Ikea store! Like the NEC show all manufacturers were invited to display their latest boats and gear, the difference being that the public could quiz the minds behind the designs before picking them directly off the manufacturer’s stands and proceeding to check out!

After 12 hours of packing on Thursday – 2 days before the show - every vehicle at Palm and Dagger Europe HQ was full to the point of bursting. For me, this hectic day of packing and unpacking was a great opportunity to meet many of the faces who put in huge amounts of hard work behind the scenes. Obviously getting prepared for a show on such a scale can provide a fair share of stress but the combination of cool characters at the factory provided witty banter to keep work rolling all the way through the weekend. As our super structure stands came together and all was ready for show opening, we stocked up on food and sleep, ready for the Saturday morning rush.

With a queue of paddlers eager to get away from the cold morning and see what was on offer, it was a busy start to the weekend. As is always the case at shows people are after a good deal and Brookbank had set up two options… 10% discounts or if you were buying a boat, the price of the boat would determine the amount of free gear you were entitled to. I.e. if you bought an Agent at £799 then you had £120 to spend on gear or if you bought a GTX at £599 you would get £75 of gear, for free! For many this worked out really well with people ordering their Dagger boat and then picking up the latest Palm PFD, Dry top or safety equipment of the stand.

At Palm and Dagger our efforts towards a green and waste less operation whilst producing top quality equipment was a big talking point throughout the weekend. With what are likely to be the cleanest facilities in the industry we’re very proud and this shows in our equipment and rubs off onto our customers who were all very impressed.

The Saturday night party lived up to the hype! With excellent Mexican food, a bucking bronco, in house mariachi band and live music until late, big smiles and laughs were had by everyone. Starting off around the 30 second mark, bucking bronco rides seemed to improve with alcohol consumption and the evening record ended up around the 1minute 45 mark!

As predicted the Sunday morning started slowly and then went off with a bang at lunch time when once again the Dagger and Palm stands were full. This lasted through to 5 o’clock close when everyone stepped into their roles to pack up and ensure a swift departure to get some grub. All in all it was a great weekend for the U.K. boating scene. With lots of new interest and happy customers it was a job well done