Partner Article

Up the creek with a paddle

A former recruitment boss has swapped the boardroom for the beach to bring a new watersports craze to the North East.

Joe Thwaites is setting up a mobile business renting stand up paddle boards - a cross between canoeing and surfing.

The sport is an ancient form of surfing which can be traced back to the very early days of Polynesia.

Its most recent history dates back to the 1940s when surf instructors on Waikiki beach, in Honolulu, used to stand up and paddle out to the breaking waves using a one-bladed paddle.

Mr Thwaites, of North Shields, and a colleague are set to start renting the boards from a van at Tynemouth’s Longsands beach this weekend.

He said: “I tried paddle boarding on holiday in Greece and I’d seen it on YouTube. No one has decided to pick it up and run with it up here. Hopefully local tourism will be booming this summer and it can become really popular.”

Having spent the majority of his career working in recruitment, 34-year-old Mr Thwaites decided he wanted a career change and is currently training to be a badminton instructor.

He is to run the paddle boards business alongside his new coaching career. Going under the name ‘Board Skillz’, they will start purely as a rental firm but with a view to coaching paddle boarders in the future.

“I’ve always been very passionate about watersports - windsurfing in particular. I’m constantly travelling looking for good spots to go windsurfing.

“Paddle boarding is something with a very wide appeal. It’s a bit easier than surfing because the boards are wider and longer,” Mr Thwaites said.

A qualified windsurfing instructor, Mr Thwaites is hoping to roll out the paddle boarding rental business across the region. As well as providing chances to try the sport in the sea, he hopes to organise river runs on flat water.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .