Residentials are a EUCC hybrid of Socials and River Trips. Starting on a Friday night, we’ll pick up the boats and kit for a river trip, but this time we’re off for the entire weekend! We usually run two residentials across the year, each to a different location. Residentials give us the chance to travel further afield to rivers which we normally cannot reach in a day trip, so you can try out rivers which are less commonly run by the club. We run a river on both the Saturday and Sunday, with the evenings dedicated to socials of a very special type, filled with games dreamt up by our social secs- we can guarantee that it won’t be like any weekend you’ve had before!
Residentials are a huge part of what people remember most about our club. They allow an opportunity for people to go all out on the kayaking side, dedicating a whole weekend to the sport whilst at the same time getting to know people extremely well from the club and learning how we operate. There are no real prerequisites to residential trips – in previous years we’ve had trips running with people who’d never been in a boat before! Realistically though, it would be best if prior to coming on the trip you had at least made it to a pool session to try a wet exit – doing your first one on the river is cold!
The rivers we run are also different, usually of a different style to the ones we run on day trips – perhaps slightly longer, as we’ll have more time, or more ‘interesting’, as we’ll be in a more interesting location (usually up North in the Highlands). Rivers like the Etive are both beautiful and exhilarating with big drops and lots of places to practice your skills! Unfortunately, places on Residential trips are limited and are assigned on a first come first served basis. Sign ups for Residentials are well signposted in advance though, so you should have plenty of time to signup or let someone know you’re interested. The date and cost of the trip is dependent on several factors which are currently undetermined, however in previous years they have run at a cost of approx. £65 in late September/early October and January/Febuary. We also ask that for Residential trips you have signed up to become a full member of the club for insurance purposes, details of which can be found here.
