ShePaddles Cymru 2025 at Plas y Brenin

Sunshine and smiles seems to be a reoccurring theme at the Plas y Brenin ShePaddles Cymru weekend! This is my fourth year in attendance for this event as a Pyranha Kayaks ambassador and as always, the 2025 event was awesome! I left the weekend feeling sore in my body and happy in my soul. I met lots of wonderful people whilst having a great time out on the water and am so pleased to have been able to join again this year. Do read on if you want to find out more about what we got up to!

Friday – Arrival and Katie’s talk

I arrived at Plas y Brenin (PyB) on Friday evening in gorgeous sunshine. After signing in, I grabbed dinner and had a lovely chat with a bunch of other women I had just met. I really love getting to meet lots of different people at events and hearing their stories. Thank you to Sarah and Rosie for some lovely dinner conversation!

I was so pleased to get to PyB early enough not only to grab some dinner but also to be in time to hear my friend Katie’s Friday evening talk. Katie Simmons is an incredible woman who I absolutely adore. Katie is also a total bad ass when it comes to paddling and her talk was about her adventure on a SUP down the Grand Canyon. It was a really cool talk and I loved hearing her share her story with us. I know many of the other women who attended felt the same. What an inspiring lady!

After Katie’s talk, there was an opportunity to play some ice breaker games and have a chat with lots of people. I met a lovely woman called Maddy who shared some of her hopes for the weekend. Working in the outdoors, Maddy is used to looking after other people and was excited to have a weekend focusing on her own paddling. I met lots of lovely ladies on Friday and it was great to hear about what they were excited for!

Saturday – Coastal SUP adventures & wildlife spotting!

I’m an early riser and couldn’t resist a quick walk in the morning before breakfast. PyB is an incredible place and the site itself has the most stunning views. I find it very peaceful and I am sure many of the visitors who come to stay feel the same way.

At breakfast, I had a lovely chat with a lady called Claire whom I had met the year before. She was off sea kayaking and very excited. I then saw Katie again who invited me to come and join her on her guided coastal SUP day. My plan had been to stay on site but Katie mentioned she might go over to Puffin island and it was not hard to convince me to come along!

Before sessions began, the whole group came together for a welcoming talk from Grace. Grace is the PyB instructor who organises the weekend. Her team of instructors, alongside the Paddle Cymru volunteers make the weekend happen. The introduction was brief but everyone seemed very excited and eager to get out on the water!

Katie had two paddlers with her for coastal SUP – Rosie who I had shared dinner with the night before and Anna who I had met previously. I was the fourth paddler in the group. I have a white water SUP that I mess around on at my local white water course but had never taken a SUP on the sea before and to be honest had never paddled a SUP over any kind of distance. Still, I was paddle fit I told myself and ready for a challenge!

We loaded the trailer and mini bus up with sea kayaks and SUPs. There was a sea kayaking group also going to Puffin island, so we joined forces and teamed together. One of the event sponsors, O’Shea, were kind enough to lend me a board for the day.

We drove over and parked up near the top of the straits. Trailer unloaded, boards inflated fully and sun cream applied, we were ready to go!

As we started paddling, we all started on our knees. I was used to a white water board which is much wider and more stable. However, I thought it would be okay once I got used to it. I could stand up but the conditions weren’t the calmest and I ended up spending a lot of the time paddling on my knees.

There was a bit of wind, quite a lot of chop and fairly regular waves coming at all angles from the many passing boats and jet skis. It was quite good fun but meant that every time I stood up, I would often end up reverting back to my knees.

We got out on the rocks after a little while so that Katie could explain the crossing over to Puffin island to us and what the water was doing. Being used to rivers, I find the sea a fascinating place and am in genuine awe at the planning that goes into each trip out on the sea. Katie was a good teacher for this and her experience as a leader showed.

As a kayaker, I felt ferry gliding was well within my capabilities but on a SUP I wasn’t so sure. It was quite hard work but we all managed it!

We got to Puffin island and I was ecstatic. It has been a long time item on my wish list and I was so happy to finally get there. Massive thank you to Katie for making that dream happen! There was so much wildlife as well! I didn’t see any puffins but the number of other sea birds we saw was amazing! I was told by the sea kayakers that on the other side of the island, there were some happy seals as well!

Being on a SUP is much slower than in a sea kayak so we turned around and headed back to the get on. I won’t lie, I found the paddle back really quite hard! I’ve never really been taught how to paddle a SUP properly and I am sure that my technique is atrocious! That combined with the rough conditions and the fact that the board I chose was so different to what I was used to made things challenging. I thought I was pretty paddle fit but it turns out I’m not very SUP paddle fit!

I told myself (as my teenage students would say), I just needed to ‘lock in’. I tried to focus on my paddle strokes and would count them in batches of 100. Rosie was storming at the head of the group like the total boss woman that she is! Anna was at the back with me and trying to make conversation about paddling. I apologise Anna for my lack of ability to chat on that paddle back. I promise it wasn’t you!

When we got back at the beach, I was very happy! After a sit down with a classic PyB flapjack and a bottle of water, I felt much better and was able to appreciate a little more just what a beautiful place we were in! It really was stunning and as everyone shared their happy stories on the journey back, I felt very appreciative of what a lovely day I’d just had. Some type 2 fun I think (or type 3 as Katie called it!)

It also made me realise even more what a legend Katie is. If I could barely make a ferry glide on the Welsh coast on a SUP, I cannot believe how Katie was able to paddle white water rapids that would scare me in a kayak!

Once back at PyB, everyone sorted out trailers for tomorrow before grabbing showers and getting some well deserved cake. I had some lovely chats with a number of people. There was supposed to be a ‘brands hour’ but as everyone was pretty busy, this was fairly chilled out. A number of woman had come for a chat with me about kayaks and kayaking throughout the weekend and I think that in many ways, conversations like this that are more organic are nicer.

I did however get talked into running the throw bag olympics by PyB legend Pete Catterall who tagged me in and then promptly disappeared! Luckily I’d bumped into the lovely Sarah Keight who joined me in helping to organise some forced fun! A little obstacle course for some throwline practice was set up, with the ending obstacle to get the throw line in being a Pyranha Kayaks kayak! A huge well done to Jenny who smashed her lap in 20 seconds!

After a lovely dinner date and catch up with Sarah, there were some Saturday night activities. This included a talk by Emily Williams about her Canoe adventure in Scotland and fittingly this was followed by a very lively Caleigh!

Sunday – Sunny white water adventures!

There was a common theme to the faces over breakfast on Sunday morning – tired but happy! I had planned to tag along on one of the white water days. My friend Laura was off to the Tryweryn with her group and offered me to join them.

As me and Laura were chatting, Fran overheard her and came over. Fran is one of the Paddle Cymru volunteers and was also the coach leading the other white water group. She asked if I’d like to come and join them on the Dee instead as the group was much bigger than the one going to the Tryweryn and they would be happy for the extra help on the water.

I really enjoy coaching and leading on white water so was more than happy to be offered the chance to join this group. I met with Fran, her co-coach Simon and the 11 women who were signed onto the session for a preliminary chat. It was an introduction session to white water although a couple of the women had some previous experience on white water.

Once we had all had a chat, we headed over to Mile End Mill on the river Dee. There we got kitted up and unloaded the kayaks. A couple of the women needed to borrow kayaks so I went up with them to Go Kayaking where Ellis kindly got us sorted with some demo kayaks. Big thank you for sorting us out with those!

We split into 2 groups with Simon taking one half of the group to the top of Mile End Mill and me and Fran taking the other half to the bottom. We had Katie, Maddy, Linh, Caroline, Eve and Emma in our group. Fran took the lead and ran through a beautiful coaching session to get everyone used to the moving water and eddy lines. It was lovely to see that over a couple of hours everyone made so much progress.

Maddy excitedly asked me to film her on one of her ferry glides at one point so she could send it to her family. There were many other lovely moments from across the group. To share the excitement when one of the women would nail a move was really nice. You could see how proud they were in that moment! And I was proud of them! Massive shout out to Katie in particular who was super determined to succeed with everything and just kept giving things a go until she got there!

After lunch, we moved up the river a little for some rapid running! I promised to go down first to show the lines but importantly to be designated camera lady at the bottom! Sitting on the rocks at middle hole as everyone blasted through was awesome. So many happy faces! A special shout out to Maddy and Andrey who also each had an unintended spin in middle hole but managed to nail it and paddle out! It’s not easy when things don’t go to plan but they managed to not only save it but style it out!

I then went for a quick swim as it was really quite hot at this point and to be honest, it was less hazardous than making my clumsy way back across the rocks. It was gorgeous in the water and I felt very refreshed afterwards!

Once we were out, kayaks returned and everyone changed, it was time to say goodbye. It was lovely to part ways with so many happy paddlers and Katie even gave me a thank you hug which was appreciated.

I had a really lovely weekend. Thank you to all involved in either running or participating in the ShePaddles weekend. I went home on Sunday tired in my body but happy in my soul! Thank you Plas y Brenin, Paddle Cymru, brands who supported the weekend and of course all the participants who joined for the fun! Hope you had a lovely time and see you next year!

If anyone has a favourite moments from the weekend – do leave a comment below! Also if any of the #teamwhitewater ladies and reading this – drop me a message and I’ll send you the videos of you styling those rapids!