The past two weeks were amazing!!! We started it all off by driving to Folkestone and getting the Eurotunnel to Calais. Then there was a 19 hour drive to follow to Bratislava, Slovakia. This included driving through France, Belgium, Germany, Austria then Slovakia (and some how we ended up paying €19 for a vignette to drive across the border into Hungary and turn around again to come back to Slovakia). We managed to do the drive to Bratislava all in one go without stopping to stay the night in a hotel meaning we got there a day early. I then had two amazing days of training there before my first international race (ECA junior cup race 5) where I made the final on both days in K1 and C1!!  I had an absolutely amazing time racing and made loads of great new friends!! Then the week following the race I had two training sessions a day (apart from we had the Wednesday afternoon off to rest and go into old town Bratislava which was very pretty). The training was great and I think I have a new favourite course!! Then on Friday lunch time we drove about 3 and a half hours to Ceske Budejovice in the Czech Republic where I did another race! This race went even better than at Bratislava…in C1 I came 3rd on Saturday and 5th on Sunday which meant I ended up coming 3rd overall and I won a bronze medal! I was really happy with this result for my second international race – first time ever paddling abroad!! On the way home we drove through Czech Republic, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium and France again! We visited a total of 8 countries!! We got our Eurotunnel back to Britain at about 1am and then on the way back we stopped off at HPP for a session! I had an absolutely fabulous time away and I can’t wait for next summer to go to Europe and train again! Bratislava is  my new favorite course!!!

Here is a video of racing at Bratislava.