By Scott Reid
Copyright scotsman
A Perthshire water sports business is harnessing more than two decades’ of experience to help save lives. Family-run Nae Limits was founded 25 years ago with a single guide and van and now employs 16 staff and six freelancers at its Ballinluig adventure hub and café, near Pitlochry. After two and a half decades of providing adrenaline-fuelled experiences such as rafting and canyoning, it will now use its deep knowledge to help rescue people who get into serious difficulty in water. The outdoor adventure firm has become an accredited centre for training outdoor guides and emergency service professionals who are tasked with saving and rescuing people who have fallen or been dragged into rivers and canyons. Within a few months of accreditation, Nae Limits has trained a steady flow of people across bodies such as Mountain Rescue, Police Scotland and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. Company co-owner Dale Strang said: “The training side, on a personal level, has been a five year journey. The starting point was safety and knowing what to do when things go wrong. My experience and knowledge with white water leant itself naturally to being able to teach that. “We are five minutes from our base to Grandtully, one of the heaviest used stretches of white water in Scotland. If there is going to be an incident, it is going to be in an environment like that. So, not only are we able to train people, we are able to train people where they’re most likely to attend a scene and that is invaluable.” He added: “We have a combined 100 years of experience within Nae Limits and we realised that the safety of people in water environments could be vastly improved, in general, if we just opened the doors. Delivering courses such as this is going to be a massive part of what we do as a business going forward.” The business is an approved provider of Rescue 3 Europe Water courses, a standard which must be achieved by those tending to emergencies or accidents in Scotland’s rivers or lochs.
