Bill Anderson

Freestyle Kayak

Favourite Alpkit products:
Filo down jacket

Significant or memorable achievements:
Every new river I paddle is a good new memory

Upcoming projects:
Graduate (hopefully!) in May then spend the summer traveling round Europe.

Best comp results:
7th British Champs 2007
Peak Uk Challenge junior Champion 2000 & 2002

Activities:
I spend all my free time kayaking, whether playboating at Teesside, out on a local river or after the long drive to Scotland to find some water. I can’t wait to graduate this year and am looking forward to going back to Europe with my boat. I’m hoping to visit Slovenia, Italy, France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany then head up to Norway. The Freestyle World Cup series is in Europe this year so I am hoping to compete in the 3 events in Prague, Augsberg and Thun.

Et cetera:
Hopefully get a freestyle event back to Teesside!

Recent Daring Deeds

Tyne Tour

The Tyne Tour is an event I have been attending for years. It’s an event that gets better and better every time and never disappoints. This year was no exception.

After a few stressful weeks in a new job I was relieved to finish early on the Friday and headed North to Weardale looking for some paddling. The signs for the weekend weren’t good. After driving to several rivers we managed to find nothing worth getting our kit wet on so we headed to Tyne Green. It was still early afternoon but we managed to bump into some friends and headed to the pub. Friday night was legendary as always. ‘Spoons in Hexham was full to the brim with kayakers all catching up on each other’s adventures, or ..

Continue reading..
Posted on 12 November, 2008 by Bill

The Mighty Nene

A sunny September weekend saw paddlers from all corners of the UK heading to Northampton for the ever popular Nene Freestyle event. The course and gazebos were set up, the sun was shining, the music cranked up – It was going to be a good one…

As Jim from Alpkit who usually runs the events couldn’t make it he’d asked Nic and I to step in and help the guys for Northampton Canoe Club to run the event.

The event started with the Boater X heats which were fun and I managed to win my heat which I was pleased with. Then it was onto the Freestyle heats. The Nene is a bit of a Marmite spot. You either love it or hate it. I quite like it and look forward to competing here each year. The ..

Continue reading..
Posted on 24 September, 2008 by Bill

Monday Mission

At the Festival of Freestyle I was receiving phone calls the whole weekend from friends out on rivers throughout the country so I thought Id take the opportunity to catch the last of the high water levels on the Monday.

Nic and I took a drive up to the High Force – Low Force section of the Tees and found it to be at a low-medium level which can provide plenty of fun and some interesting lines. After multiple runs of all the rapids I decided to take a gamble and head further north to see what water levels were like in the weir valley. Again, levels had dropped off making a lot of the runs a little low but a few of the local park and huck spots would be working nicely.

First up was a ..

Continue reading..
Posted on 18 September, 2008 by Bill