After a very busy few months moving from my home town of Chester, to Nottingham. Moving schools and training hard in the UK, France and Bosnia I have a free minute to write a post.

BOSNIA PRE EUROPEANS

The time has come where the Junior and U23 GB teams have returned to Bosnia. Thankfully the river is staying at a consistent level now, not like in our training camp, where the water rose each day from 25 cumecs to 200, which was challenging to say the least with gates having to be risen every 5 minutes.

The course has been altered very little since I was last here, and although it is not the most technical river out there, I am still thoroughly looking forward to racing, which starts with my individual and team qualification races on Thursday.

And yes, it’s a little hot, 40+ deg c :O :O :O

PADDLING MY NEW PYRANHA VARUN AND CARBON FREERIDE BLADES AT HPP

As my training started to dip for racing, and "hot" weather visiting the UK I decided it was about time to get comfortable in my Varun, before I get on larger rivers in central Europe in 3 weeks time. I really enjoyed paddling the boat down river, its a lot faster than other play boats of its type, yet also carves nicely on a wave as well as it being playful in a hole. It really is ace for all round paddling, which is exactly what I intend to do in Austria, Slovinia and Switzerland.

The carbon blades were also great; I am still using the Freeride blade design, which as I said in a previous review are nice strong, powerful blades. The carbon blades are quite a lot lighter, making them more similar to my slalom blades.

David Bain