About us

Guides Who Prefer Water With Nothing Happening On It

The company was started by two paddlers who had spent years working on whitewater and coastal trips and noticed that most of their customers were nervous rather than thrilled. What those people actually wanted was to be outdoors, on water, moving slowly, with somebody knowledgeable nearby and a decent lunch at the end — and none of that requires rapids. The canals and abandoned river arms in this region provide exactly that, and nobody was using them.

Working out the network took two seasons of paddling every reachable kilometre: mapping the launch points, measuring the portages around locks, recording which stretches dry out in August, noting where a fallen tree blocks the channel and finding the villages that would still serve lunch at three in the afternoon. Those notes are updated every spring, and every route we sell has been paddled by our own staff within the last twelve months.

We also work to keep the waterways usable. Our teams clear fallen timber from the smaller arms with the navigation authority's permission, maintain three launch slipways, run a litter paddle every month and monitor the invasive plants that choke a canal within two seasons if nobody pulls them. Guests are welcome on all of it, and the annual report on what was cleared and planted goes out to everyone who paddled with us that year.