I’ve spent weeks watching the weather, watching the rain, watching the river levels and wishing it would all align so I could get outside and do some paddling. Spending the winter writing a blog that contains every detail of every paddling experience you’ve ever had (and I’ve written twice as much as has gone live so far, so it’s a lot!) really awakens that urge to get out and do it for real. But it took until April this year. Last year I was out canoeing in March and doing my Sea Kayak Award training by April. The year before, I was doing a half-day sea kayaking trip by March. But this March, it was unimaginable. Even taking my paddleboard out on the local river was impossible because the rivers have been fast-flowing lakes all over the fields all winter.
But we finally had a nice day, it hadn’t rained – not apocalyptically – for a little while and it was warm and it finally felt realistic to get out. So I packed up a drybag and charged my GoPro and went down to the river to hire a canoe.
The canoe hire place that I use has had new owners over the winter. The previous owner knew and recognised me and I barely had to even ask for a canoe before they were waving a paddle and the card machine at me. This time, I was a stranger. I asked to hire a canoe. “Oh yeah, yeah, no problem. One of the single ones? Or a double? Oh, do you want a sit-on-top?” and I had to say “No, not a kayak, I want a canoe, please. A canoe-canoe”. I know most of their customers are grockles and they don’t know the difference between a kayak and a canoe and I don’t know how to signal that I do know the difference and I do know that it is a canoe I want without sounding… well, pompous, is perhaps the most family-friendly word. I did get asked if I’ve ever canoed before because canoes are hard work single-handed but they took me at my word when I said I’ve done this plenty of times and can handle it.
I know I’m not a great canoeist. It’s definitely my weakest of the three main paddlecraft. I crash into reeds, I lose control because I’ve taken my hands off the paddle, I swear at currents trying to drag me backwards and I still can’t do the j-stroke. But I can get up the river by myself without crashing into anything expensive – the boats moored along the first third of the course, the trees overhanging the river in places, the occasional jetty. I’m sure it would be so much easier if there was a second person or even a third but I can do it by myself.
So I jumped into the canoe (“Can you go and fetch one of the green ones?” the owner says to one of the staff, who assumes “the green ones” means the lime green single kayaks, not the dark green canoes, so we go through it all over again, no, I really do want a canoe and I really can handle it by myself) and head up the river. As it happens, there was a large group in two of the little motor boats plus a child in a single kayak setting out at exactly the same time as me. Normally, a motor boat would overtake me very quickly but in this case, they had no idea how to steer it and because they were zigzagging all over the river, they couldn’t put full power on it. The result was that a single person paddling a canoe by herself kept permanently ahead of a motor boat. I kept well over to the right so they could overtake but they never quite made it. At one point they drew level with me and a boy of ten or twelve called “Well done!” over to me in a very condescending tone. I bristle at being congratulated on my canoeing prowess by a child in a motor boat.
They eventually got ahead of me because I pulled over to get my camera out. The GoPro was on its floaty stick facing the wrong way so I took it off and then struggled to get it back on, which is partly because there’s a very strong current and if you take the paddle out of the water for ten seconds, you’ll find you’re pointing in the wrong direction and floating away when you look up. Just didn’t have the time to realise the rubber block was in the way before I had to throw it all in the bottom of the canoe to get myself back under control. Moral of the story: get the GoPro ready before you set out. Also, make sure you’ve got the photo settings set up before you’re at the mercy of a river.
At the very least, the motor boats were now ahead of me and I didn’t have the lawnmower-whine constantly in my left ear. I didn’t have to keep hard right to avoid being crashed into and I could talk to myself as much as I liked.
I’d been told to go left, up the river instead of turning right and going down the river because there was a really strong current. That’s fine, that’s the way I always go because there are too many expensive boats moored downriver – both banks and in a line down the middle – and too many tourists and I know I’m going to scrape one of them or hit it with my paddle, so I always go away from them to where it’s more peaceful. I’ve been out in strong winds and strong currents before but this was really quite hard work, especially as I got closer to my goal of the road bridge.
The bridge, the furthest you can go – because there’s a weir beyond it – is further than I always think. There’s a particular point where I always think I’m at the penultimate bend, only to discover there are at least three beyond it. There’s quite a tight bend with a strong current round it even when the river is otherwise still, a straight section that’s always hard work, another hard bend and then you think you’re almost there because you can see the bridge across the field. In fact, you have to paddle away from it and then zigzag round at least two more bends before you reach it. I really struggled with the false-penultimate bend, barely making any forward progress, thought I’d be ok on the straight section, struggled with the straight, struggled more with the next bend and then thought it would easy sailing up to the bridge. It was not! By this point, I’d realised I was still two bends away, I was a little over half my allotted time and I couldn’t do it! I struggled on and on, barely holding the canoe in place and then I had to give up. I’m doing this for fun. I canoe because it’s a peaceful serene way to spent a morning messing around on the river. I’m not there to do battle with the river, to reach the bridge come hell or high water. If I’m not enjoying it, why am I doing it? Why do I need to get to the bridge? The aim of the activity is to spend an hour enjoying being in a canoe. It’s type 1 fun, not type 2. So I turned the boat around and sailed back.
Not literally sailed, obviously, but the strong current worked to my advantage. I know from previous trips that it’s always a lot quicker going back, which is why I don’t worry that I’ve used up more than half of my hour getting there, but this time, thirty-five minutes of furious paddling upstream were matched by about ten minutes of being carried downstream. I used my paddle to steer, to avoid being flung sideways into reeds on bends, but there was no need to paddle for propulsion. I could reasonably safely sit there with my paddle across my lap, taking selfies. Occasionally the stern would drift out and I’d have to course-correct but otherwise I sailed back easy-peasy. This is what I do this for!
There’s a long low motorboat that takes tourists for trips up and down the river in the summer. I’d dodged it coming up behind me shortly after setting off and again when it came back – no passengers on board, so maybe it’s just the start of season “check she’s still working” run. As I sailed back, I saw her coming back up the river so I got over. This is a little tricky because I was right in the area where all the boats are moored, so I have to navigate a fast-flowing river between moored boats and a moving one without hitting anything – not that some of those boats could look any worse if I did hit them. I was quite pleased with my positioning when the skipper called out that they were coming over to moor on my side. We were at precisely the right position that if I carried on as I was and they came in to moor, we’d crash. Hard to port, then. Swoop across the river. Let the Orca moor up and then hard to starboard again before anything else came up the river.
As usual, I was back far too early. I’m not in the habit of handing my canoe back just because I’ve done my trip up and down the river. I want to go back again, even if it’s only five minutes back up. I always intend to practice my j-stroke at the end and it never works. In this particular case, the lazy river trip back had let me forget how strong the current is when you’re working against it and in a moment of lost concentration, I found myself entangled with a weeping willow. I can see why they put that against the entrance to the Shrieking Shack. It looks so delicate but those dangling boughs are quite a thing to crash into unexpectedly. By some miracle, I managed to hang on to hat, camera and paddle all at once but it meant getting dragged further under the tree. Getting out was easier – I’m still going to have to go straight at the dangling bits but at least this time I’m prepared for it.
After that, I turned back and landed ashore, handing back the canoe to the owner and now I made a startling discovery. The groups in the motor boat appear to be the family – plus presumably some friends – of the new owner. There were two women sitting with at least eight kids in a circle by the slipway, I’m sure it was a man in the motor boat struggling with the steering and the boy who’d shouted “Well done!” to me was hopping from kayak to kayak to pull my canoe back along the quay to tie it up alongside the other canoes. I’d noted him steering and thought that he was pretty good at it, better than the adults, but if he’s been here every day of the Easter holidays, he’s probably had a lot of practice. His younger sister, in the kayak, was also getting on ok and I’d wondered a bit when she paddled so far ahead of the motor boats that they couldn’t see her. I was so far ahead of them that I couldn’t see them and I couldn’t see her either. But if her father owns the boat hire, she’s probably pretty experienced too (not experienced enough to be holding her paddle up the right way, though).
So I sat and watched the boats for a while and then I walked over to the other side of the bridge for an ice cream. This is the rule. You canoe, you have an ice cream. That’s partly why I have to wait for a nice day. I don’t want to be canoeing up the river in a gale and beating rain but I also don’t want to be eating an ice cream in that.
By the time this is published, we’ll back back at the boathouse and I’ll probably be getting enough paddling to satisfy anyone but this is the one I’ve been waiting for, my first opportunity in 2024 and it was pretty good.
Bumblebee Paddles 