Thursday evening I was windsurfing on Whitlingham Broad in Norwich!

This might seem like a random thing to be doing of an evening after a day at work…

…but it was really good fun!

It came about through my friend Jo who works for the council, who as part of their Active Norfolk campaign, are currently running introductory courses in various sporting activities. These are aimed at 14-25 year olds, to try and introduce people to different sports they may not have tried before, with no experience necessary.

Jo has just completed her kayaking BCU one star award as part of the programme (I would have liked to do that too but it was whilst I was in Australia). And when she told me about the windsurfing course which runs for 3 evenings in August, I thought, why not?! For only £10 for the three 2-hour sessions it seemed like an opportunity too good to pass up.

I was a little apprehensive at first- the usual nerves about falling in, making a fool of myself etc…

But our instructor was friendly and laid back and put us all at ease. It was a really small group of only 5 as well, so we were able to have lots of one-to-one tuition and enough space on the Broad not to crash into each other! (well, not too much)

We learnt the basics on dry land first, practising on a board on a spring. Then we had to paddle out and stand up, just on the board. After that hurdle, it was then time to add the sail. More practising on the board onshore, before it was time to brave it and head out onto the water!

We did surprisingly well and while we did of course all fall in, it was easy to get back on the board and after a very short time we had the hang of it- the proof is in the pictures which Mark kindly took! 🙂 I would say that the only difficulty was the lack of wind! It wasn’t very breezy to start with and by the time 8:30pm came around it had died down completely so we weren’t exactly racing along. We also were using “baby sails” (only 1.8m) so next time we’ll move onto the slightly larger ones which will be better at holding the wind.

All in all it was a really fun experience, and I will be trying to remember everything for next Thursdays session!