Kayaking is not a Crime

Left to right: Me in college with a "Chorley Euxton" sign - amazing; the t-shirt I was wearing in college today.

After receiving my WCA Access Campaign t-shirt on Friday and putting off wearing it for a good few days I finally got around to putting it on and heading to college this morning. Wow this is an amazing blog post[!] However, I thought I'd just put down what the simple, emotive slogan on a basic blue t-shirt managed to achieve.

From getting on the bus after someone misread it for "Barking is not a crime" to getting off this evening and heading for home I have been bombarded with people asking me why it says "Kayaking is not a crime"? I dutifully explain the current access problems we face as paddlers and how we only have a crap percentage of rivers we are actually allowed to paddle, and the remaining percentage we can only paddle if we are willing to bow down to the big, bad landowner and do what they say or we piss the land owners and fisherman off and paddle them anyway. After telling them this tale, which is a complete juxtaposition of what they usually here from me about kayaking they all agreed that it's a bit crap to be a paddler in the United Kingdom when we are faced with such troubles to do something that people see as an amazingly cool activity.

Obviously these t-shirts are working and pushing the access campaign into the public domain. So if you want to support the access campaign buy a t-shirt and shout loud about the problem - sign the petitions, which are linked down the side of my blog under "Fighting for Access" - go paddle rivers and ignore the problems and maybe the people that don't like it may just realise that they will have to start accepting us paddlers.

Good lines, stay safe and see you on the wet stuff...
Iain