PFAKS Round One - The Washburn

This past weekend saw the first round of this year’s Plastic Fantastic AlpKit Series take place in the Washburn Valley in Yorkshire.

Don’t be deceived by the bibs - the Washburn is no Zambezi. Although the river is small and low volume, it is set in lovely countryside and provides a great venue for the event which has both boater cross and freestyle competitions.


There was a reasonable turn out for the event but it was unfortunate there weren’t more female paddlers competing. Myself and Claire O’Hara were the only women in expert class, in between helping out Jim with the judging, we had a lot of fun paddling together. Our boater cross final was eventful, with a swim to sort out in the middle of the race, after that me and Claire continued to race. I messed up the gate that had to be negotiated on the last drop of the course and couldn’t manage to catch up to Claire.

Me on the weir in the boto-x final - photo: paul wilkinson

In the freestyle, Claire’s squirt boating skills paid off and my lack of practice showed with Claire schooling me with her super cleans. The men’s expert category was dominated by Ed Smith winning both the Boto-X and the freestyle.

Thanks to Paul Wilkinson for these photos of me. He always takes such awesome shots. More photos can be found at here http://wordpress.pwilkinson.net

Happy judges

I’m not sure of the rest of the results but they should be posted shortly on the www.alpkit.com/pfaks. Many thanks to Jim and all the helpers for another great event.