Lowestoft District Canoe Club

Formed in 1979, our club celebrated 30 years of paddlesport in October 2009.

Our family friendly club is run entirely on a voluntary basis and gets involved in many forms of kayaking and canoeing. We have approximately 130 members from all walks of life.

Our members are all ages, but you need to be 10 years old before you can join the training classes. Half of our members are juniors and the rest don’t seem to be much more grown up! If you have any special needs please don’t be put off, just give us a call or send an email.

We are located adjacent to the watersports centre in Nicholas Everitt Park, near Lowestoft. The club is in an ideal position to take advantage of the miles of paddling offered by rivers and lakes of the Norfolk Broads and the beautiful coastline and rivers of Suffolk and Norfolk.

We paddle on Oulton Broad, which is probably the best lake on the Broads. We meet on a Tuesday evening between 7 and sunset, April to September for training or general paddling. Throughout the year there are a number of ad hoc paddles organised by club members. In the winter we run training sessions in a local swimming pool.

We have a purpose built club house/boatshed that was bought following fund raising by club members. We have access to changing rooms and hot showers, which are part of the Suffolk Watersports Centre (SWSC) and the Lowestoft Rowing Club. The club owns a large fleet of kayaks and canoes for both junior and senior paddlers. Whether you wish to paddle whitewater, marathon, touring or sea kayaks, or open boats (Canadian canoes) the club will have a boat for you. These together with buoyancy aid, spray deck and paddle are available to borrow for training sessions.

We are affiliated to the British Canoe Union (BCU), the national governing body for the sport and this ensures that all of our policies, risk assessments, child protection procedures and our coaches follow best practise. The club actively encourages paddlers to achieve BCU Star qualifications or new to the club is a schemed aimed at under 16 yrs of age but any one can do it if they like called paddle sport award (A similer scheme to the Duke of Edinburgh) and supports anyone wanting to train to qualify as a coach.

Take up your paddles!