Henry
Appearances
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
Yes. So we've just got a new investor and we're currently expanding the cafe, expanding kind of the food and beverage offering that we have here, but also expanding the number of people that we can get on the water and the number of staff that we need for that. So we've just invested from a water side of it in a new fleet of sit on top kayaks. So we're buying loads of those in at the moment.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
We've just bought a load of racing paddle boards and racing touring paddle boards, as well as the extra large paddle boards to go alongside our normal paddle board fleet. And then we're expanding the powerboat fleet and the dinghy fleet so that we can run more sailing sessions too.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
Organised chaos. Organised chaos is probably the phrase. So school holidays, we run all of our school camps or all of our kids camps. So we'll have day camps and week camps going on. So that's where kids come down, students come down. And they'll do a mix of sports through the day. We do at least two. We try and do three if we can. So that could be any of the sports we offer.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
If they come down over the whole week, then they'll do everything that we offer. So that's normally around 32 kids at a time running that. We'll then have dinghy lessons happening, which will have about 16 kids on it. A windsurf course, which will be happening with another eight on it. A kayak course, which will also have eight on it. So...
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
60, 70 kids at a time in the middle of the summer on the weekdays. It gets very busy, but all of our instructors, as we know, are qualified, experienced, and they're all over it.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
Once we kind of get towards the summer, we then try and open a waiting list where we can.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
There's something just about the water, you know, like you can never, all we want to do is be next to the water. In terms of open spaces and mental health for people, it's really important. There are studies that have come out recently that say blue spaces, water is actually three times better for us than green spaces are, which makes sense for a lot of us.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
A lot of the instructors here, very chilled out, very happy people. So for people to be able to get out, get on the water and kind of push their comfort zone a
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
respectfully kicking a ball around the park is a really cool thing and a really interesting thing for them to be able to do and what is your sport of choice my bread and butter what i grew up doing is sailing my whole family sail i'm originally from plymouth so i'm down on the coast i then windsurf ended up doing that by accident but really enjoy it so when there's kind of a nice amount of wind we're sailing when it's really breeze on really windy we go out on a windsurf board and when there's no wind we go paddleboarding
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
I think there is something about the British people, because we are an island, but there's something about whatever we do, we end up near the sea, near the coast, near water. So I think it's kind of ingrained in who we are as a people.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
From an operational point of view, the side that I'm kind of mainly looking at, the things that are happening on the water, we're pushing open water swimming. We started that towards the end of last year and now we're running it more actively. Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturday and Sunday mornings. So that's really exciting and a really cool thing to do.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
Again, it's a very accessible thing for everyone to be able to get down and do. Alongside that developing kind of our paddling offering with the racing paddle boards and the touring paddle boards that we've spoken about, investing into the sit on top kayaks so that we can get more people out on the water more easily, safely is really good.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
So matched with that is the catering offering, the food and beverage outlet that we've got here. So we're hiring a chef. He started with us recently. His name's Kyle. Everyone come say hi to Kyle. We're doing more cooked food as opposed to the toasties that we used to do in the past.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
The menu currently is looking like burgers with chips, there's salads, open earlier in the mornings, open later in the evenings. I always joke that I've got the prettiest and the best office view in the whole of Surrey because I look out from my office and it's the lake. We get gorgeous sunsets here that set at the far end of the lake.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
Just to the left of those transmitters is where the sun set and it goes poof and it's all very pretty and if you get a really dead flat calm evening you get perfect reflections of the sky and it's just some of the best sunsets I've ever seen.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
We've started opening up to fitness instructors this year. In the mornings and through the days, we've got a range of different instructors coming in, running family sessions. We've got yoga sessions going on and just general HIIT and high-intensity sessions happening with different instructors. Something that we used to do a few years ago was paddleboard yoga.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
oh wow yeah it's really cool it's not necessarily for me i'm not that flexible um but it's something that so you're on your paddleboard doing yoga yeah and you've got to say so so you've got that other element of the board of the ground in vertical is moving as well yeah exactly so for some people it's great for other people like myself who are struggling with their balance it's slightly more difficult but we're currently trying to seek a yoga instructor to do paddleboard yoga which would be really cool i reckon as you suggested it's
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
That's the plan. Certainly with all this development that's happening and everything that's going on, it's a really interesting place to be at the moment and a really cool thing just to be invested in and working alongside and seeing where it goes.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
We are currently stood down on our main pontoon, looking out upon the lake. Axports is based here at Mercer's Park. We've got about a 50 acre lake with a mile, give or take, walk around the outside. And we're just looking out over all the different kit that we've currently got set up for the day.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
So this is Sophie. She's just been out doing some little bits on the water, moving some kit around, just because we're coming towards the end of the day, starting to pack some stuff down. Tell me what Mercer's Lake is, or what it was, more specifically.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
Yeah, there's quite a few. We're back just to the north by Mercer's West, and then we've got Spinesmere just down the road, about half a mile away, and then over at Homethorpe Estate, there's then the Homethorpe Lakes. which are all nature reserves, which is really cool. We've been around as aquasports for 31 years now. And for about 10 years before that, we were here under a different name.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
Exactly how deep it is depends on who you ask. As far as we're aware, it's around 10 to 15 metres. Because we are an old quarry, the banks are quite steep all the way straight down into the water. So even where we are, only 10 metres off the bank, we're already four or five metres deep here.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
Yeah, so if you look at some of the other local lakes that are shallower than us, they're already up towards 20 degrees water temperature. At the moment, we're still at 16, so it takes us a long time to warm up.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
We do kayaking under Paddle UK, which is the new British Canoe Union. We run paddleboard sessions under British Standard Paddleboard Association. We run windsurf sessions under the Royal Yachting Association. We run... Dinghy sailing, we run, again, under the Royal Yachting Association, and we run raft build sessions, and we've just bought a load of mega subs.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
So 18 foot long paddle boards that are five foot wide, but eight students and an instructor on board. There's nothing quite like us anywhere nearby. You have to go quite a way to find similar. So all of our staff, everyone who works for us, is recognised under their national governing bodies for their sports. They're kayak instructors, canoe instructors. They're under Paddle UK.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
The sailing and the windsurf guys are all under the RYA.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
paddleboarding is british standard paddleboard association so we're all recognized under our governing bodies that means that we've all gone through levels of training and tuition to reach that including pre-assessments first aids health and safeties as well as week-long courses in how to instruct those sports you're training all sorts of people from all sorts of ages how young from we take students from eight years old
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
I think the oldest that I've taught here was 91. Fantastic. That's really excellent, isn't it? And what's the most popular of these water sports? So in terms of just numbers and bums on seats, paddleboarding has seen a massive explosion over the last few years.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
47: AquaSports at Mercers, remembering a local war hero … and more
The accessibility and kind of the entry level kit has become quite cheap recently and is really good because we're getting a lot of people that just want to get out on the water and enjoy what we do. And it's kind of the easiest, cheapest, best way to get out there and do it.