We are thrilled to look back on an amazing year at Blue Coast Surf & Paddle. With the 2023 season coming to a close, we want to share with you some of the fantastic highlights and achievements of the year.
Despite the challenging and ever-changing weather conditions, our team worked to provide a top-quality experience for all of our customers. We are grateful for the continuous support and bookings from all of you. We owe a huge thank you to all of our team for their dedication and hard work this year. Everyone has contributed to delivering memorable, positive experiences for every individual customer, and we hope to continue to build on this in 2024.
We are very grateful for the positive reviews we have received on TripAdvisor, Google, and Facebook. Your feedback serves as an indicator that we are on the right track and it motivates us to continually improve and deliver best in class activities.
Some of the highlights from our season:
AALA & Youth Groups
We obtained the AALA license, which lets us expand our offerings for school and youth groups. This allows us to provide coasteering, paddleboarding, and surfing adventures to scouts, guides, and school groups. We are excited to continue developing this aspect of the surf school in the coming year.
Nippers Kids Surf Club
Our Nippers program continues to thrive, with a great crew of enthusiastic young surfers. We have introduced more structure to the Nippers program, aiming to help the children improve their surfing skills. The addition of a surf competition at the end of the season allowed us to introduce the kids to competitive surfing in a fun environment.
Kids Surf & Adventure Camps
One of the big highlights this year was the success of our kids' camps. We hosted several four-day surf camps during the summer, and despite some challenging weather, delivered two days of Surfing & Coasteering fun for 10 kids in our Autumn Adventure Camp.
Blue Coast Online Shop
The launch of our shop was another significant milestone for us. Stocking a range of tried & tested surfboards & paddleboards, we aim to provide the quality equipment for our customers to make sure you have the right board under your feet. It's also brilliant to see folk kicking about the beach in our Blue Coast t-shirts and beanies - it's great to see that people feel a connection to the brand we have created.
Coasteering Adventures
The launch of our Coasteering Adventures was a long time coming, but it was great to take our first groups out in September after we got everything in place. Brilliant to see such interest in a new activity at Portknockie, it's such a great coasteering venue and we're looking forward to next summer when we can get more folk in the water.
eBook Guides to Surfing & Paddleboarding in NE Scotland
In addition to our activities, we also created educational eBooks. Our paddleboarding and surfing guides for NE Scotland are designed to help beginners and improvers explore the best spots in the local area, as well as covering important safety, improvement, and equipment info. It was great to hear that local accommodation providers have been sharing these guides with their guests also - we think these are great resources and they're free! Please feel free to download and have a look.
Partnership with Moray Kayaking
It was great to get some groups out sea kayaking around the Portknockie & Cullen coastline, in partnership with Ali Garrow of Moray Kayaking. There is so much on offer locally, it's great to be able to offer variety to visitors to Cullen. We hope they go home with memories that they will share!
Team Building Activities
Team building activities are an ideal way to bring people together in the water, creating connections and an enjoyable / accessible experience for everyone involved. We have had the pleasure of hosting various groups, including workplace teams, stag and hen-dos, and birthday parties.
We would like to extend our gratitude to Banff Academy for organizing a fantastic in-service day, where teachers had the opportunity to go surfing.
Fingers crossed for more consistent weather in 2024! We are looking forward to our third season, and will continue to work on improving our offering to offer the best experience for our customers.
Thank you again to everyone who has supported Blue Coast Surf & Paddle this year, including all of our customers and our team, as well as the welcoming communities Portknockie & Cullen. Cheers!
