The PaddlerUK magazine December 2015 issue 5 | Page 5

STEFFAN MEYRIC HUGHES

Happy birthday

kayaking

Steffan Meyric Hughes switches his attention to
the best and most influential kayakers the world
has ever seen, starting with the first –
John ‘Rob Roy’ MacGregor.
Happy birthday the sport of kayaking.You are 150 years old this year (2015).What, you
didn’t know? Well, it’s official. Kayaking, unlike many ‘sports’, can trace its origins fairly
decisively back to a particular time, a particular voyage, a particular man and the book
that he wrote about his experiences.

The time was 1865, the voyage was a long
meander through the canals and rivers of
western Europe, the man was John ‘Rob
Roy’ MacGregor and the book was 1,000
Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe. Of course,
kayaks and canoes both predate this
Victorian adventurer by millennia – possibly
by up to 4,000 years or more. But it was
not until the 1860s that MacGregor, a
Scottish patent lawyer living and working in
London, was taken by the idea of having a
‘canoe’ built solely for the purpose of
enjoyment.
In fact, his ‘canoe’ bears little resemblance to
the craft of today: it was designed by
MacGregor, a man of many talents who was
among other things a reas