Orca canoe building workshops

Canoe building is on hold as we are now building a range of 'Flintstones' styley canoeware.. Perfect for those extended wilderness trips! The table below is made purely from good old Cumbrian driftwood. Stay tuned for more camp furniture..

Ok folks.. here it is, after months of blood sweat, tears, trials and tribulations, Steve has emerged from Orca H.Q. with our very own, unique design of ply based handmade clinker style open Canadian Canoe. Here she is happly floating on derwentwater on her madien voyage, with a fine send off of Orca roadies to watch the event. This canoe is now ready for you guys to build on any of our canoe building workshops that we run in the Lake District. Check out the web site for dates. The pics say it all.

New canoe

Now the nights are getting longer we are back in the lab and working on our new clinker-based design of canoe. We've finished one canoe already but she's only 95% right, so no.2 is on the way.. we'll settle for a 98% pass. She'll be launched tomorrow, so we'll upload some photos of her maiden voyage.. This one's a much longer process at 4 1/2 days..

2011 course dates.

Check out the web site for all 2011 courses dates and canoe building workshops dates that have been a real success this year, and thanks to all who have been on a trip this year.

Sweden

Contented Gemma

Food

As seems to be the norm these days, we had flood warnings on the first day of our Sweden expedition. Our local weatherman told us to 'sleep in our life vests'.

Female Larch (Larix) flowers only last a couple of weeks before they turn to an immature cone after fertilisation.

The larch trees of the Dunkeld crags were planted by cannon by the 4th Duke of Atholl.

Butterburr (Petasites hybridus) - a member of the Daisy family and so named because during the middle ages it was used to wrap butter, has the largest leaves of all the uk natives. The male flower seen here bottom left is tiny, but will produce leaves upto 3 feet across! The rarer female flowers are blue.