“The canoe building courses last a week and during that time each customer builds a Selway Fisher Prospector, it’s a good general purpose open canoe that paddles well, works on white water and can be rigged to sail well. However, the most popular courses I run are coracle building and paddle making courses.”
Why is that? I ask.
“Time. Taking a whole week out of annual leave allowance isn’t easy for people these days, especially if they have a family and kids where there is pressure for fitting in family holidays. – If you were to ask me what the biggest single issue that my building course customers have it is time. Coracles and paddles can be made in a weekend. The customer arrives on Saturday morning and by Sunday evening they can drive home with a traditional coracle on the roof of the car or a beautiful paddle they have made in the boot. The coracle courses always get booked up pretty early on and we get a lot of people wanting to do a course where they can have fun, pick up a skill or two and come home with something tangible, something that they have made.”
“It’s really important to realise that no previous experience is needed on my courses, it is my job to help everyone to learn along the way. I’m always really impressed with the results my client’s achieve.”
He shows me one of the coracles, it’s a substantial craft being about 4’ in diameter and beautifully made with ash weave and tarred cloth and the rim fixed in place with copper boat nails. The thwart is striking because of the care which has been taken with the wood. This is very different from the usual ‘knock a coracle together in a weekend’ fare. We have a chat about the origins of the coracle, how the different Welsh rivers use different types depending on the flow, rapids etc and how they are still used in very small numbers in the salmon fisheries on some of these rivers to this day. I recall some less than glorious attempts to paddle a coracle Mark explains:
“You need to sit very centrally, if you lean right over to the side – you’re over – but actually once you are in they are very stable. The boat is moved by placing a long single bladed paddle in the water in front of you scull to pull yourself along – the technique is the same as sculling in a canoe or kayak – but forwards not sideways!. The major advantage of a coracle for fishing, and especially when fishing for fish as tricky to corner as a salmon, was that it hardly disturbs the water and is about as stealthy as you can get boat-wise.”
Canoe built by Mark Aplin on the River Spey in Scotland, a formidable river indeed, with Geoff
(front) and Mike (back) - Mike asked Mark to build the canoe as a 70th birthday present for his dad Geoff - the canoe was first used on a surprise birthday trip down the Spey!
Mark (centre left) with five clients who all built willow framed coracles with him in February - Mark runs willow coracle courses in the winter and early spring when the willow is freshly cut and bends well
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