Training & Preparation for the NFCT
It would have been incredibly naive if we were to think that we could have just gone and done the Northern Forest Canoe Trail (NFCT) without any training considering our physical conditions, let alone our lack of experience canoeing. All of us that had decided to thru-paddle the NFCT had experience camping and kayaking in the UK. However, we knew from exposure to USA-based content from outdoor enthusiasts that the rivers, land, flora and fauna would all be very different from what we have in the UK. We also knew that canoeing was a bit different from kayaking, so we would need to familiarise ourselves with a new mode of water travel.
How did you know what you need to train for?
This is a question that may seem simple, but one that the group took in a number of different directions based on their own previous experiences. We ended up producing a “Skills Checklist” where we all dumped skills or abilities that we thought that the team needed. Robert dug out his ever growing library of outdoor books (some highlights are in our Outdoor Book Review Nook) and other resources (such as this NFCT page) to gather likely needed skills or abilities. We were also aware there would be some unknown unknowns and the best way we’ve found to fill that gap is to consult with people who have done this sort of thing before, so we then found people who had done canoe expeditions in North America that we could spend some time with and discuss topics. Whenever a new topic that we had not considered came up, we added it to the checklist.
How to handle the differences in skills and abilities in the group?
The checklist provided the framework for addressing these differences. Skills or abilities on the list were sorted by what we needed in the group, and what each individual may need to be able to do. When doing this yourself it is worth considering at this point if you have an important skill, for example first aid, then you will want to have more than one person with that skill. If you only have one person, what do you do if that person is unavailable? For example, if it’s the first aider who is the one in need of aid. For skills or abilities that we required redundancy in we discussed as a group who would be responsible for becoming proficient in them. We then all went through the list and rated ourselves on a scale of “I have no idea” to “I would happily teach others this skill”. Then had a big old chat through what we had given ourselves for each of the skills or abilities, and harmonised our understanding. This was a good exercise, as it actually generated other items that we hadn’t considered. It gave us an idea of what we needed to practise and learn, both individually, and as a group. At a number of points leading up to the thru-paddle we reassessed our skills, and determined where we needed to focus future efforts to address any deficits.
What physical training did we do?
We recognised that our occasional kayaking and largely sedentary jobs meant that we lacked the physical strength and stamina needed to complete the trail. To help the group to get fitter we contacted a number of Personal Trainers (PTs) to see if we could get any assistance. We found it tricky to find anyone who would even attempt to help us, as many PTs are more focused on looking fit or “shredded” rather than getting their clients “functionally fit” or “expedition fit”. However, we did find a company through a contact at the fencing club that Robert attends who were game for picking up the challenge. We had some in depth discussions and set some personal long term goals e.g walking for 300m with a 28 kg canoe on our shoulders. These were then broken down into shorter term goals to work up to the larger ones.
Due to our lifestyles we needed training that could fit in around work and life. We found three 30 minute-ish high intensity workouts, three cardio sessions (running), and where possible one to two paddles a week worked well for us. We tapered these exercises as we got close to the trip. This worked better for some in the group than others, however sticking with the process saw significant changes in our bodies, and we had sufficient fitness that it was not an issue for us on the trail.
How to balance skills in the group?
After having some rather frank conversations around skill levels in the group it became obvious that we had a bit of an imbalance. There were also some topics we were knowingly ignorant of. This meant we had some learning to do! Each member of the group took topics to go away and research. Findings were collected in documents, and filed in our shared document repository (the ever-classic shared Google Drive folder). At our weekly group meetings we shared what we had found on our topics and discussed them. It is surprising how much content a group of dedicated individuals can find out about a topic. Robert got to crack out his seemingly ever growing library of outdoor books again, and use researching as a reason to pick up new and interesting volumes.
First aid is a topic that we have yet to discuss on this site, and it might be a little while before we do, as it turned out all of the group have gone and done wilderness first aid courses in the past and at the time of the trip our certificates were in date. Three of the group had also undertaken extended first aid courses for work. All in all, after reading a couple of wilderness first aid books as a refresher we all felt comfortable going into the wilderness with the skills we had, but first aid is a topic we will cover in more detail at some point.
Actually going and doing stuff also known as “Training Events”
Due to us all wanting to make the adventure a success and be as harmonious as possible we decided to run a series of training events where we could exchange and practise the identified skills. These were the events and courses that we ran and attended in preparation.
Introduction to Canoe Touring
This was a weekend with Canoe Trail, an outdoor company based in Bedfordshire, where we were introduced to controlling a canoe as well as how to handle a capsize of both of our own boat and of others. Canoe Trail also has an awesome green field campsite, which is a very manageable downstream canoe from their centre. This was a great way to get a baseline as to where we were from a skills and equipment standpoint. We all enjoyed the weekend and it gave us the confidence to invest more time and effort into this venture.
Katrina after our first ever canoe portage, with a very different canoe load out to what we ended up taking.
Outdoor Cooking Weekend
It had been years (due to the pandemic) that any of us had got to cook over any sort of open fire, further than a BBQ in the back garden. We realised that if we were going to spend months eating what we could cook on a fire or from a petrol stove we had better get back into the swing of it. We also needed to all brush up on our wood processing. Fire lighting was also a hot topic for this camp. The proficiency of the group cooking outdoors was considerable. After almost 3 days of continuously cooking and baking over a fire we all felt much more comfortable with the prospect of feeding ourselves outdoors again. This weekend also gave us time to brush up on our tarpology, and helped us refine our equipment, showing where we could reduce weight or where we required additional functionality.
Cooking a hearty jerky stew and heating the pan for bannock.
Multi-day Mini Canoe Expedition
We needed to start pulling some of our skills together, and do a multi-day unsupported canoe trip. For our first downstream trip, we chose the Wye. This was an interesting trip to organise, as the UK is not necessarily set up for canoe touring (something about most of our rivers being relatively small/short means you usually do more day trips here). On this trip we got to try out new gear, get a feel for longer trips, and get used to manoeuvring fully laden canoes. We found that many of the ways of doing things and pieces of equipment we used on day trips were just not so helpful for multiple days (looking at you, rash vests).
Canoeing down the Wye in a section that actually had a reasonable amount of water in it.
Foundation Safety and Rescue Training (FRST) Plus Course
There was a bit of a hole in our group's knowledge regarding what to do in an “all in” situation, or if a boat became pinned on a rock realised in the checklist. To help us with this we talked with Rich at Canoe Trail and he provided us with not only the standard FRST syllabus, but also additional information techniques and skills that are suited for wilderness expeditions. Little did we know at the start, but we finished the day with a real medical emergency (nothing too major, but quite an event at the time). We actually ended up deploying some of the skills we had learnt a few hours before to deal with it! We all felt much more confident handling capsizes after this course. Funnily enough we managed to go almost the whole NFCT before we had anyone in the group go in, on the penultimate day, but that is a story for another time.
Robert single-handedly righting and emptying a capsized canoe.
Team Building DIY
We had a weekend put in our calendars as a group to go camping but from time to time plans can fall through, and this was one of those times. We found out that our plans needed to change for one weekend, at short notice (i.e. Thursday for starting on Friday). That didn’t stop us meeting up to do something. The “something” ended up being helping one of the team do some DIY. This was a very different weekend, but was still fruitful for team dynamics. We had plenty of time to discuss niggles and things we needed to find out more about, or improve, from our last few outings.
Yes, that is a bright blue wall Katrina is painting. Yes, it is the colour that was intended. No, this is not our house.
Cold Camp
We knew that there was the possibility for the temperature to drop below 0°C during the first few weeks of the trip. Many, but not all, of us had previously camped in temperatures well below zero, but we were all a little rusty. This camp was for us to find out how little gear we could get away with and still remain comfortable and safe when camping below zero. We also wanted to practise fire lighting in cold wet conditions.
National Outdoor Expo
One in the group was made aware of the National Outdoor Expo at the NEC in Birmingham, and raised it to us all, as it might have been a good place to find gear and providers we had not previously been aware of. From the media coverage it looked like there could be some interesting and useful companies there. However, this ended up being more of a social event and despite there being a “paddling” section, it was just not aimed at canoe touring or even wilderness travel. We tried to make the most of it, having a good chat with a couple of suppliers and picking up a couple bits of stuff, but ironically none of it ended up coming on the trip with us!
Introduction to Whitewater in a Canoe
Having looked at the NFCT guide books it was clear that there would be a few sections of whitewater that we would need to traverse. For instruction we looked to Canoe Trail once more. This was a fantastic day in Derbyshire floating down the river Derwent. During this day we covered many topics and skills, including tracking and lining. We thought it could be useful, but little did we know how much of this we would be doing on the trip.
Rays of Wisdom - Two days with Ray Goodwin
While looking around for ways to improve our adventuring skills, we went back to one of Robert's earliest memories of wonder at canoe expeditions, and rewatched Ray Mears' Bushcraft (Season 2, Episode 2: Canoe Journey). In this classic episode Ray Mears meets up with Ray Goodwin and paddles a section of Missinaibi River in Canada.
While watching the episode Rob asked “I wonder what Ray Goodwin is doing with himself these days after writing his book and all?” Katrina did nothing more than pick up her phone and Google the question. It turns out that Ray was still doing training and coaching sessions, and has his own website, the wonderfully named https://www.raygoodwin.com/. We made contact with Ray and explained our plan. We were interesting enough to him that he organised a two day coaching course just for us around Bala in Wales.
We learnt so much in those two days. Ray is, hands down, one of the best instructors we have had in any outdoor activity. It was well worth spending the time with him. By the end we could all manoeuvre the boats so much better both on and off the water. These skills made our NFCT trip so much easier and more enjoyable. We could also highly recommend his book ‘Canoeing' by Ray Goodwin.
River Thames Trip
The NFCT is a long way, so we knew we would need to be able to paddle many miles day after day. There are not many waterways in the UK that are long enough to do this without going up and down the same river multiple times, but we found that the Thames fit the bill. Upstream of London, the Thames is relatively easy going with nothing more than a grade 1 riffle, and it gave us a solid week’s worth of river to paddle so we could just chew up the miles. We paddled almost 90 miles over 6 days, which gave us the confidence that we could get up day after day and paddle for 7 to 8 hours without too many issues. This was a great event to practise packing, loading and unloading canoes too, as well as carrying a week's worth of food in hot weather in a 30L barrel.
The Great Glen Canoe Trail
(putting it all together)
The last big practice before the real thing! The Great Glen Canoe Trail is known as one of the best Canoe trails in the UK. The trail follows the 60 miles of the Caledonian Canal from Corpach (Fort William) in the West to Clachnaharry (Inverness) in the East. The route takes you along man-made canals, the open waters of Loch Lochy and Loch Ness, the slightly more sheltered waters of Loch Oich and Loch Dochfour with a few portages thrown in for good measure. These were some of the biggest expanses of water that we could practise on locally. We attempted this in April 2023, and we happened to have a storm blow in on the second day. We learned valuable lessons on this trip, particularly with regards to when to get off the water, as open canoes don't like big waves. Learning this lesson in Scotland saved us from a potentially rather nasty experience on one of the largest lakes on the NFCT. We ended up not finishing the trail due to the bad weather, and that’s a story we have to tell you soon, the article is planned to be released shortly if it’s not linked already.
A Shift in Viewing Habits
There were one or two subjects that we were a little vague on at the beginning of our training journey. We started scouring YouTube for any canoe camping channels and documentaries we could find. We specifically looked for people doing the NFCT, or going on trips in the surrounding locations. We studied what they were taking, how they were using the equipment, and what they were having issues with. This all helped us learn from others. There were little things here and there where we went “a-ha, that could be helpful”. It became a thing where we would search for new content during our lunch breaks, and send links to each other for us to watch in the evenings. We could not point to one in particular at the moment as being a fantastic source, and don’t get us wrong there is a lot of junk out there, but there are also some fantastic nuggets if you can find them.
Mental preparations
When you know that you are going to go and do something that is going to be physically and mentally challenging, it is worth considering how to mentally prepare as well as physically (though physically does feel a lot easier to plan!). One of our major concerns was the possibility of homesickness. To help with this on the through-paddle we made care packages for ourselves. These were bespoke, as we each prepared our own. Robert made sure he had music, films, and podcasts as well as some of his favourite biscuits. Katrina had music, books, and sweets that made her feel better. We even made sure that we sent ahead some favourite snacks from home to post offices along the way, to top up these little comforts.
We also looked into tools and methods to help us process event thoughts and feelings in constructive ways. Mental health is not talked about enough in general, let alone in respect to adventures. This is covered in more detail in our article “Post Adventure blues”. It is worth considering what you are going to do when you get back from such a trip to help yourself reintegrate with normal life and society if you are considering a similar length of trip.
Other less obvious preparations
There were also a few other things that we sorted out before going away for such an extended period, such as:
Going to the dentist for a checkup in time to get any corrective work done if anything was amiss.
Getting an eye check to ensure that our glasses prescriptions were up to date.
Going to the doctor's and getting up to date prescriptions as medication would run out during the trip.
Getting a haircut before the start so that we did not feel like we would have to get that sorted while on expedition.
Ensuring toenails were all cut and any hard skin dealt with. This was to ensure that we were starting with comfortable feet.
Making sure we had all our physio exercises for old injuries memorised and sorting out a stretching routine.
There was also a load of stuff we sorted for our house before leaving it for three months, but that’s another article.
Would we prepare differently if we did it again?
From a knowledge perspective we think we were about right, as there were no surprises regarding the flora or fauna, local laws, or outdoor skills. If we were going to change anything, it would have been to get a bit fitter for the portages, by doing a bit more walking with weighted packs beforehand. However, in saying this it would only be minor.
All in all we were quite happy with the training that we did, and we hope that you’ve found the process we went through useful. If you have any specific questions, we’d love to hear from you, so get in touch and we’ll see if we can answer them.