BCU

Steve T · BCU

People were asking last night about BCU membership.

Details are here: http://www.canoe-england.org.uk/membership/

The BCU is the umbrella body. In England we have to be members of Canoe England. Basic membership is £32.75 (under 18s £18.50), comprehensive membership is £38.75 / £23.00, and only needed if you want to coach or compete. There are discounts for family members of full adult members. Juniors don't need membership to compete as the club has cards to cover this.

The main benefit is third party insurance. If you cause any loss to a third party during canoeing activites you are covered up to £10,000,000. It also lets you paddle at places like Trafford where they insist on you having third party cover.

Other benefits include discounts on a number of stores (mainly 15% at Cotswold Outdoor) along with a licence to paddle on British Waterways canals and some managed rivers like the Thames. You also get £2.00 discount at the Washburn, free Canoe Focus magazines and, errrr, that's about it really.

You will also be contributing towards their fairly ineffective access campaign and the maintenance one of the most difficult to navigate websites I have come across. Plus you will help to fund the training for our national competitive teams, which is one sport we sometimes win at. You will, of course, get a nice warm feeling from contributing to the national governing body for our sport.

Membership does not give any additional rights to paddle non-licensed waterways which is 99% (if not all) of what we do. For general members the main benefit is the insurance, and it may be that you can get that elsewhere or already have something as part of your house insurance.

To be honest (purely a personal view), if I wasn't planning to get my coach qualification I probably wouldn't bother. Since most of the coaching I do is outside the Level 2 remit I'm not sure that it even helps me then.

Although they have done some things of interest to us (me anyway), such as funding the Washburn changes, you can see from the website where the focus is: competition, introducing kids to flat water (great if they carry on, most don't) and going, cap in hand, to landowners to negotiate access on flat rivers (mainly in the south of England). Very little of your fees would be spent on supporting white water touring paddlers. The argument might be that we don't really need any expensive infrastructure but access is in such a mess that I'd pay double the membership fees if they could fix that.

I'd be very interested in the views of other BCU / CE members. I could have become jaundiced due to spending too much time reading the militant wing of UKRGB.

Steve