My brother Dave Nicoll who was a member probably from 1996 when he built his first coracle on a Terry Kenny’s course on the weekend of the Ironbridge regatta of that year, died on Saturday 20th April after a short illness aged 85

The funeral is on 16th May at the Bury St Edmonds Crematorium at 1pm and it is being streamed (please contact Euan Raffel for details). Donations to Alzheimer’s Society. And colourful clothes would be preferred.

He invited me down to the regatta that first year and the following years until at the end of 1999 he made me my own coracle and we met up when we could to paddle at Ironbridge, the Mongomery canal dinghy dawdle and also the S2C Sudbury to the Sea paddle each year a 2 day paddle on ht river Stour. Until his Alzheimer’s and age meant the long distance driving & paddles were too much. I started just doing 1 day of the S2C and taking him for little a paddle on the river Stour on the 2nd day. He would also go to Bures on the Stour, when he could, to enjoy the regatta there in August. We even carried our coracles up to the peat bog at Plynlimon the source of the river Severn and paddled over a few days to Shrewsbury, doing rapids for the first time which was great fun. In later a year we paddled from Shrewsbury to Stourport.

He also built himself a Shrewsbury coracle which he used to go fishing with his friends in the Suffolk area where he lived. He loved his coracles and took his Ironbridge coracle on his Narrow boat when they went away so he could paddle in different places when they were moored for the night. He’d always wanted to build a one and Terry's course gave him the chance and it gave him many years of pleasure and adventures. We would have liked to paddle more together but the 170+ miles between us meant it was a bit of a logistic challenge at times, but the coracles gave us a lot of fun and memories.

Wendy Gee