no i do not want the slalom cancelled, what i want is open access to all the rivers in my country, not restricted to one or two weekends a year or to a specific discipline.Also, some of you are going to run the river anyway and annoy fishermen because there is no agreement, but you want slalom cancelled. Where is the logic in that?
the access agreement discussion fell down, check sharedrivers.org.uk you will see that we where being offered three weekends a year, and then have too enter into a seperate agreement to paddle the best section (chain bridge to town falls). thats not acceptableI thought the WCA was negotiating the access agreement for all paddlers. There are no updates on this on their website since February. How come they did not capitalise on the successes in Athens?
also last year everybody stayed off the river to show that we can be reasonable and that we wanted an agreement which would allow fair access to the river, the non competitive events where cancelled yet (and i am happy about this) the slaloms where allowed to run.
so after being reasonable for a year, i will be back to paddle the dee. there is no acess agreement - no reason for me to stay off. and it is not an "im allright jack approach"
I do not want anyone to think that i am anti slalom - it could not be further to the case, but what gets my goat up, is that after staying off the river and loosing the dee tour, that a group of fellow paddlers could run a petition and try to get a seperate access agreement, then when they bow to the majority write a piece of vitriol as now disapeered from the front page which stated.
gareth (my real name, i live in the valley)It's recreational paddlers who have stopped the Town Falls races, because they want wider access to the Dee and believe that the slaloms, and the money they bring to Llangollen, can be used as a lever to get it.