This is something of a ritual, to go out canoeing on the river on the first tolerably sunny Sunday that the hire place is open. And then I write about it, even though there’s nothing in particular to say that I didn’t say last year. Look, I like paddling, I like writing, I like writing about paddling and material for a paddling blog is material for a paddling blog.
Last year’s first canoe was a bit tricky. The tide was high, it was quite breezy and the current was very fast. I fought the river the whole way and had to give up on my hopes of getting to the road bridge a couple of bends before because… well, one, it just wasn’t happening. But two, I wasn’t enjoying it. I don’t canoe for any kind of achievement or because I have to. I canoe because I find “messing around on the river” a delightful way to spend a Sunday morning and if it’s not delightful, there’s no point in doing it.
This year, the weather was much better and river conditions were much better. In fact, low tide hit about halfway through my paddle. The tide was so low that I was convinced the reeds had been involved in a fire because they were quite black until about halfway up. It’s only now that it occurs to me that reeds probably don’t blacken, they just flare right up. I did have the sense to eventually realise that it was just mud, thick dark mud, exposed by the low tide.
Of course, having not been in a canoe since last August, it took a little while to get the hang of it again. I instinctively tried to paddle it like it was a SUP, with the little flick at the front. Canoes and SUPs are balanced very differently and you don’t do that in a canoe but it was really hard to override that instinct. So I paddled up the first couple of bends like a dog with an arrow in its brain, dodging people in a rowing boat who had even less idea how to row than I do (there’s a reason I never hire a rowing boat!) and by the time I had the river more or less to myself, I more or less remembered how to paddle this canoe.
I made it to the road bridge! I glanced at my watch from time to time but I have to remember that because the road bridge is upstream, it takes twice as long to paddle up as to be carried back down. If I can make it to the bridge within 40 minutes, or maybe even 45 minutes, I’ll be fine. And I think I got there within about half an hour. That was fine, I just sat in the boat and let the river carry me back, stopping regularly for selfies. The trouble with stopping for selfies is that the moment I take my hands off the paddle, I start drifting quite dramatically towards the bank, so there was a surprising amount of time spent fighting to turn the canoe back around, get myself out of the mud and get back on track. Even so, I was back with ten minutes to spare, so I turned around and paddled off again to mess around for a few more minutes.
But that’s not the exciting bit. Neither is the ice cream, the toastie, the duck laying an egg or the stroll up the towpath in the sun. No, the exciting bit is that the hire company came under new ownership last year and those new owners already recognise me as a regular, even though I only made it down there twice last year. They have plans for the business – getting it set up and getting used to it last year and then this year they want to start a kind of club-slash-members-evening and I’m invited to be part of that. It won’t be until after Easter, which is great because I don’t think I have so much as a free hour until after Easter anyway, and I don’t think they have any particularly clear vision for exactly what it’s going to be or how it’s going to work just yet. Emma did say that there are people who are nervous about taking boats out on their own or just plain don’t want to go out on their own, subtext being that I could be a boating buddy for someone, so it might work out a bit like my role at the boathouse, where I’m utterly unqualified but I’ve demonstrated being reasonably competent and confident enough to help out. Of course, between Rangers, Brownies and the boathouse, I’m either not going to be able to get down there as often as I would like or I’m not going to be able to get down there at all (please don’t pick Mondays or Thursdays!) but I like the idea of it, I like the thought of spending some evenings on the river and besides, the boathouse is operating on a slightly smaller scale than usual this year, so I might have more free evenings than I expected.
By the way, last year, as I was creating this blog and running two “storylines” simultaneously – my paddling history and how I got into all this, and what I was actually doing more or less live – everything was tagged either “my paddling story” (the past) or “paddling in real time” (the present). Now I’ve caught up on my story and everything is going to be more or less real time, I’ve deleted the paddling in real time tag and everything’s going to be tagged as “Bumblebee paddles” to keep it separate from “#Girlguiding Paddles” (the latter you’ll also find on Instagram if you’d like to see Girlguiding paddling – obviously no actual pictures of the girls but occasionally you’ll see them silhouetted or with their heads carefully painted out in the distance to give an impression of what we’re doing without violating anyone’s privacy).
Bumblebee Paddles 