Pinkston Watersports has turned 10 this year!
Pinkston Watersports is based in t
he city centre of Glasgow on the canal basin at Port Dundas, just minutes from junction 15/16 of the M8. Pinkston is Scotland’s only artificial white-water course and was the brainchild of a group of enthusiastic volunteers spearheaded within the slalom community predominately. This was with the aim of supporting emerging Scottish white-water paddlers to access training which had been available significantly more easily in England. The original model was a Centre which would be accessed by clubs predominately without the need for anything more than a skeleton staff. The Centre has however gone from strength to strength over the last 10 years. Pinkston operates within 4 strands – water, classroom and container rental for the paddling community, schools, clubs, uniformed groups and rescue services. In addition, Pinkston has a direct delivery programme for the general public to learn, have fun, experience and develop skills in paddling. We also have a strong delivery programme for local schools specialising in supporting children and young people. This includes very low-cost youth clubs and paddling clubs weekly for young people in our local area who may struggle to access watersports. Our last strand is our work with over 40 different rescue services from across the UK who use the artificial white-water course to support their swift water rescue, flood defence and rescue from vehicle training.
Pinkston has an enthusiastic staff team supported by a strong volunteer Board
team. This allows for a breadth of expertise and talent to develop sessions, clubs, rolling clinics, female only paddling, amongst many, many other things. Pinkston has a strong H&S ethos and we pride ourselves on our development over the last 10 years. Jo Airey leads the team as General Manager and also sits on the Board of the Activities Industry Mutual (AIM), Niamh Shannon leads the team on the water, four of our talented staff team including Niamh also paddle for Team Pyranha – we are super proud of them.
Our 10th birthday year has been filled with brilliant stories from our paddling community – “getting through my Paddlesport Instructor training – amazing memories”, “the first National League Canoe Polo we have ever had in Scotland”, “you helped my 83 year old dad into and out of a kayak – he had a brilliant experience on the water”, memories from folk we now miss, folk who enjoyed the weather, folk trying something new for the very first time, first ‘loops’, a birthday party – so many memories we were delighted to be part of!
Another best birthday treat was that we took delivery of our precious 4th pump – now we have a critical spare should we suffer any further pump malfunctions – and of course we can now undertake routine maintenance without disruption. This was a significant funding step for Pinkston and due to the significant work of our volunteer Board.
The celebrations continued all season long – the first event was our ‘thank you’ to the paddling community with our summer Boater X. This year we included a free BBQ for all and a park and play session for £5. The turnout was brilliant and the staff team probably enjoyed it the most….
The biggest party we saved for the summer holidays and the people of Glasgow. We opened the gates on Saturday 3 August to almost 2000 people – our key goal was to get as many children on the water as possible all day long, free of charge. The sun shone and we delivered that with bells on – we added lots of other activities to try to make sure people didn’t have to queue… ah well… best laid plans and all that! The climbing wall, the bungee trampolines, the movie, the face painting, bushcraft games, the fire engine, the stalls, the live music, the food trucks -all helped to create a memorable day. Our funders and supporters helped to make this free day out very special indeed. The staff and volunteers all worked so hard to help out – and ALL were very much appreciated. One of the biggest attractions on the day was the cardboard boat racing – with 38 boats – we needed 2 races! Quite the spectacle.
Andy Laird of Rapid Blocks travelled a significant distance to help out – and got the worst job on site too! One of the true joys of Pinkston is the sense of positive community and camaraderie. It feels like people want to roll their sleeves up and lend a hand! We salute you all!
An incredible group of volunteers -sadly this is just a photo of the morning crew… we doubled these numbers in the afternoon – 
As the children and young people head back to their classrooms, we wanted to add one final THANK YOU to our local community and, in part, because we simply didn’t have the capacity to offer every child who turned up to the Birthday Gala Day a free session therefore Pinkston is delivering a free session to 150 children from primary schools in Possilpark during September. This has been quite the birthday party year!