The Family Adventure Store are glad to announce that Dave Cornthwaite’s lecture, “An Adventurous Life”, went down a storm in Bradford-on-Avon on Tuesday 2nd March. Seats were filled and donations on the door raised £100 for the AV Foundation charity that Dave supports on his expeditions.
Hey! We got a call this week from the partner of a certain rock star who is a house hold name in the uk, a sense of privicy dictates that we can’t say who, but needless to say he will be on most CD racks in the uk! we were bowled over to be able to supply him with this little Old Town Trapper 111 in wood and canvas, especialy as we recently toured the Old Town works in the state of Maine and saw first hand descendents of the native american Penobscot tribe building these lovely craft by hand with such skill and dedication, however, you don’t have to spend quite the £5,000 price tag to get on the water, we have a large range of open canoes staring from around £500 which will do pretty much the same job
Confusion reigned supreme in the Family Adventure Store yesterday as our youngest, Laurie, scouted around for something that could help him reach a newspaper clipping high up on the wall. Naturally, our LOL decided to elevate himself using the deck of the world’s lowest standing longboard - a rollsrolls.
We’re pretty sure that the extra 3/4 inch didn’t help him out much, what do you think?
At long last our FAS upstairs office is receiving some much-needed body heat in this chilly winter months. Our resident adventurer, Dave Cornthwaite, has just returned from a successful 2500km kayak journey along Australia’s Murray River, as part of his ongoing endurance charity project, the Great Big Paddle.
A lovely bunting welcome for Dave
So far we haven’t seen Dave do anything but hug himself, not in self-congratulation but merely to keep the cold away, but he’s now preparing for a series of talks around the UK, and if his pictures and stories are anything to go by it’ll be a whizzbanger. We’ll be organising one of Dave’s talks in the Hilperton/ Bradford-on-Avon area in the next month or so, so watch this space.
This unbiased review was carried out by Alex one of our Saturday staff.This is what he says:
Dagger mamba what a boat ok I will explain the story about this boat
I currently own a Necky Crux and have owned this for around 2 years now. I’m now looking for something that will outperform that, so I will be able to tackle any river that stands in my way. After looking at many options from the Wavesport Habitat to the Pyranha Burn I decided the one to try would be the Mamba.
Well the dagger mamba is a beautiful boat to paddle I will now explain all from bottom up why I think it’s the best creek boat out there at the moment. Starting from the bottom the use of rails found on many new playboats means that it is perfect for surfing in waves as I found out and also carving in and out of eddies was effortless. The hull line also offers speed when needed in higher water and lower to avoid those annoying obstacles. The boat is also bomb proof after Terry saying yes go ahead use and abuse it I did just that, and it seems to have stood up well to my pounding. The top deck is made with the same thought as the bottom as when I was ploughing straight through waves the water was deflected perfectly, this same design allows it to resurface quickly from those bigger drops. After one small miss hap I found the boat rolls well too with little effort needed which I was surprised at due to its size and volume.
The outfitting comes in two different styles the creek and white water I was trying the creek outfitting and have to say it was the most comfortable boat I’ve paddled ever, it holds you in place with little movement but also during the whole 4 hour trip I did not experience cramp of discomfort at all which is a first for me. There was loads of room in the boat as well for all my gear which means I would recommend it for white water and coaching. So I would fully recommend this boat to any experienced white water paddler or moving water coach it is fully worth that extra price.
Emi Green, the most musical member of our Adventure Store family (although our Jen is quite good at banging paddles on canoes), is supposed to be on holiday in Australia this January, but instead she’s releasing a CD and has made two music videos. Sleep, woman! The second of the vids has just gone live on YouTube and got 200 hits in the first two hours, and we’re quite sure it will make you smile. If this doesn’t quite sate your appetite, visit www.myspace.com/emigreenmusic to hear more of Emi’s tracks.
