So, we thought it would be a good idea to lose our water virginity. Trouble was Victorian Skiffs are hard to come by and it turns out pretty damn expensive to hire, so we opted for the next best thing... a Canadian Canoe. Through efficient time management at work (in other words he pretended to be working whilst doing this) Jim (AKA: Swaff) managed to find a place to hire a Canadian Canoe on the Kennet & Avon Canal near Bath.
After passing Little Baby Jesus’ house (that’s a whole other story!) and stopping off at a burger van for a breakfast baguette we turned up at the bike shop where they hired Canoes. We were all hung over - not just a little but a lot - so when we saw the tiny green canoe that was meant to hold our collective weight of nearly 50 stone we nearly bottled it.
Doyle tentatively climbed aboard (bet that’s the first time Doyle’s been described as doing anything tentatively!) closely followed by Swaff and I. We only had two oars so the plan was to take it in turns and just see how far we could get.
The hardest thing about Canadian canoes is keeping them in a straight line - one person paddles on one side and the other on the reverse side. If you're both the same power and keeping in time with a good rythm you go straight... we rarely went straight.
After what felt like hours but was more like 20mins Swaff noticed a small child with an ice cream and consequently spent the next hour demanding we find the vendor.
Luck eventually smiled kindly on his wishes when we moored up (crashed into the stone wall exhausted) and noticed a small hand painted sign pointing to some garden tea rooms. Being the civilised trio that we are we instantly recognised this as just our kind of place. After openly being mugged of £15 we were handed a small pot of tea and 3 bowls of ice cream. Not only that but the owners of the tea room had deemed it okay for their two young children to run around the garden naked. Struggling to know where to look I buried my head in my 'River Thames & Southern Waterways' book and carefully calculated that we'd managed nearly 3 miles in 2 hours. If we had twice as many oars (as we would in a Skiff) then by these calculations we'd surely cover 8 miles in 2 hours. Of course, when we row from London - Oxford we'll be fighting against the flow - but the Thames cant be that fast can it? (Answers below please!)
After tea we went back to the canoe and decided that one more mile was in order before we turned around thus making the total miles covered a rather satisfying eight.
Here's a few pics I took on my camera phone...
Swaff does have eyes he just thinks his eyelids don’t get enough attention:
Ice cream and naked children all round... (does that sound a bit TOO weird?!)
Pointing to Narnia, or at least to the Tea Room...
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