Beyond the Feature

Coming back

Stephen returned to kayaking on his 50th birthday.

That day we paddled Boulters Weir on the Thames. It was January, icy cold and, in Stephen's words, the biggest water he'd ever faced. At the same time, his son Toby was beginning his own journey into freestyle.

It could easily have remained Toby's thing.

Instead, something reopened for Stephen too.

He'd come back to a sport he already knew — but quickly began discovering parts of it he'd never experienced before.

Finding new challenges

Stephen joined the Winter Roster and started developing his own paddling.

The Thames weirs brought new challenges. Trips to Plattling in Germany brought different water, different places and different experiences. There was always another skill to understand or another situation that asked something different of him.

And increasingly, the attraction wasn't simply freestyle itself.

It was everything that came with it.

The tinkering with equipment. Travelling. Beautiful locations. Learning new things. Seeing things from different perspectives. Meeting people and forming friendships.

Beyond the feature

That's perhaps what Stephen's journey represents best.

A feature might be the reason to get onto the water.

But it doesn't have to be the reason you keep coming back.

Paddling can become a way of continuing to challenge yourself, travelling somewhere you wouldn't otherwise have gone, meeting people you wouldn't otherwise have met and remaining open to experiences you weren't expecting.

Stephen came back to kayaking at 50.

What he found was a much bigger world than the one he'd left.