It seems the Interclubs event is doomed to go by without being recorded in our galleries here :-( Last year the 2008 event was flooded out and cancelled. This year the organisers demanded a £60 fee for us to erect our 3m x 3m gazebo to display our images!!! Sorry to say that we cannot afford to pay to shoot events so Love Mae went shopping instead (not sure if that cost me even more though!).

Our front page tells people why we do what we do here. The way we run things we will never make a profit. Love Mae diligently captures several good images of every competitor over several hours no matter what the weather or temperature. I then spend a similar amount of time in post production and in getting them online here. We meet many people who say how much they enjoy looking through the galleries here even if they never order any. So we know that people like what we do and that brings us a great deal of pleasure of course. This is the very first time we have ever been asked for a fee and we both instantly knew it would prevent us shooting the competition. If we were simply making a living off of photography, we would doubtless see the need to pay for a trade pitch. But to consider that we fall into this category is outrageous - especially as Love Mae is the VKC photographer and the Club has use of all her images free and gratis accordingly! Needless to say this was not a decision made by VKC!

Anyway, enough of that, towards the end of the event Love Mae did attend and brought me the camera to use because I felt like taking a few "snaps". Not of the competition (although I did take a couple of Tasha of VKC as I was watching her (shouting at her) down the course, but of some of the officials and a few people walking around. I enjoy my candid shots :-) There are even a couple of posed shots for those who wanted to update their facebook! Im sure I saw a model who appeared on the cover of Vogue there too. You need to check the final images in the gallery to see if I am right :-)

I am allowing all of these to be freely downloaded so just click on the images you like, hover over the enlarged image on the right, select "original" (even though its actually not the original) then right click and save as. These are large enough to give good quality enlargements up to about 8x10 I think but if you are planning on making larger ones, please get in touch with me and I can send you a disc. That will be a few quid as normal though :-)

Well done all at Staffs & Stone! Brilliant performance again and this says as much about the way the Club is run as it does about the abilities of their paddlers. Links with schools, selective procedures, great coaching and simply hours and hours of volunteer work make that Club one to be very proud of indeed. My hat is off to all involved - and also to Phil Gooding who blummin' well beat me again by the very narrowest of margins in the Veteran class! The rivalry spurred by Interclubs is, in itself, unrivalled! It is not just between the Clubs but within the Clubs as well. Even between families too as one member paddles for one Club and another for another!! The atmosphere is always great, it is brilliantly run and we always get sunshine too! Im sure it is the fave event of the year.

Finally, as the slalom coach of VKC I wish to say a big thankyou to all who paddled at the event and all behind the scenes too. I am a very proud member of the Club indeed. I think we finished 8th but it was very close I understand. Big back slaps to Rob and Deano, my team members in the Div 3/Div 2/Vet event featured in the final images below, who pulled me down the course to a well deserved 2nd place :-) What a great weekend that was! (Just sorry about the shortage of images)

As always.....ENJOY!

Peter & Love Mae :-)