The Paddlers’ Code

The Paddlers’ Code is an exciting new guide for canoeists, kayakers and stand-up paddle boarders.

Following the huge growth in paddlesports and with millions of people taking to the water every year, British Canoeing has developed The Paddlers’ Code to share guidance on how to enjoy our beautiful waterways responsibly.

The Code has been developed with Natural England and reflects their work with the Countryside Code.

Ben Seal, the head of access and environment at British Canoeing, said:

“Following the growth in new people taking to paddling, we felt this was a great opportunity to set out the sorts of things we as paddlers do to protect our environment, respect other users and safely enjoy being on the water. 

“It’s a super simple set of good practice guidelines that we hope people will share and use every time they go out paddling. It is not about giving people a set of rules to abide by. It is more about describing the good things we do as a community to paddle responsibly, and respect, protect and enjoy our waterways .”

What Are the Key Messages?

Like the Countryside Code, the Paddlers’ Code shows how paddlers can best protect wildlife and spot pollution and most importantly to:

•  Respect
•  Protect
•  Enjoy

Within each of these, The Paddlers’ Code have broken it down into key actions that we can all support. So within Respect, they talk about how we respect each other and other users. Protect outlines the way we can care for and protect the environment. Enjoy is all about how we can keep ourselves safe. For many paddlers, these actions will be ‘what we do’ already, which is great! But for others, these things will be new. 

To find out about the Paddlers’ Code in more detail click below.