Gibban

Excited to learn about kayaking as a teenager I was soon told the sport of kayaking in UK had begun with John McGregor and his Rob Roy Canoe.   Actually that’s not entirely true. I actually learned he was the founder of the sport of canoeing in Britain. Inspired by canoes and kayaks he had seen during visits to North America and Kamchatka in the late 1850s John McGregor commissioned a boat to be built by Searle & Co. Thames River boat builders in his then home town London, England. This was the first and the longest of a series of boats of similar concept he commissioned. He named it the “Rob Roy”. It served him for his first series of journeys recounted in his book “A Thousand Miles in a Rob Roy Canoe”, published in 1866. A Rob Roy Canoe, Plas-y-Brenin N.Wales McGregor’s book became very popular, spurring him on to enjoy further travels in Europe, the Baltic, and in the Middle East, and to write more books. He also took time to explore around Shetland and Orkney. He typical...