DW Lock Hopping

The DW lock-hopping, dress rehearsal, took place on Saturday 17^th . A mid-morning start from home got us all, Wheezy, Adam, John and I to Pewsey Wharf, and the boat in the water by 11 am. We were armed with my notes from last week’s little trip, large bottles of water and electrolyte drink, various ‘experimental‘ sandwiches, and bread pudding.

As the team support, our brief was to meet at eight designated points between the start at Pewsey, and the finish of about 30 miles at Aldermaston. If necessary, we were required to force feed the crew so that on hand-over to the second half team at Reading, they would be in a generally satiated condition, and possess more carbohydrates and bodily fluids than they started off with.

Reading up on all the perceived wisdom of long-distance paddlers, it does seem that certain foods are de-rigueur. Consequently, the previous evening, Heston Blumenthal’s kitchen had nothing on chez Deke’s counterpart as Mrs D and I devised various concoctions of sandwich filling that we thought would be high in carbos and low in protein and fats. After much consultation and experimentation the final array was:

1) Banana sandwich

2) Peanut butter sandwich

3) Peanut butter and banana sandwich

4) Marmite sandwich.

All, of course, cut artistically into bite size rectangles with nicely trimmed edges.

We had also considered jelly-baby sandwiches but decided that was probably too much of a good thing.

But our big cannon was the bread pudding. Having mugged up on the generally accepted wisdom it seems that bread pudding is to DWers what pasta is to marathon runners. Now marathon running is a mere doddle of only 26 and a bit miles. It doesn’t really require feeding of solids during the course of the race. In fact, you can see the advantages of keeping a road-race food-free. Apart from the logistics of getting spag-bol into the digestive tract while running, it probably saves a considerable amount of cleaning up at the finish line. But of course the DW requires some ingestion of calories while actually on the move to be able to complete the other 100 miles or so.

In order to make this work the crew need to start feeding early. But our crew didn’t seem too keen on ingesting anything solid at the first meeting place, and it wasn't 'till the end of the Crofton flight, which they had run carrying the boat, that they accepted a proffered piece of the pudding, not, I have to say with any apparent enthusiasm. What was going down quite happily however, was the electrolyte and the jelly babies (supplied separately). By Dunmill lock the crew were taking on their own, completely unscientific, sandwiches plus smaller portions of the BP. The Canadian Geese that litter the locks, seemed to enjoy the left-over parts of the BP and several geese were noticeably lower in the water on our departure.

We had trouble making our rendezvous at the bottom of the Crofton flight as the adjacent level crossing was closed and we had to wait a few minutes for the 12.10 express to clear. Luckily our crew benefited from the slight delay while they got their breath back after their exertions. The routine settled down after a while, the crew going quite steadily and our navigation improving to the extent that we made our meet-ups mostly on-time. Until, that is, Woolhampton, where we miscalculated and they got ahead of us. We were still there when they phoned in from the finish at Aldermaston three miles up the line.

I hadn’t been able to recce Aldermaston and the approach roads from the A4 were still closed. We followed a diversion sign at a set of temporary lights and soon  knew we were lost when we passed the Weapons Establishment some six miles off course. We finally back-tracked to find that the ‘diversion’ sign pointed around Aldermaston and the ‘local traffic’ was signposted on the other i.e. ‘wrong’ bloody side of the lights, hidden from anyone that might have needed to know. Thanks a bunch whoever set the signs up. Anyhow, we eventually collected a cooling off crew and set off home only 40 minutes late.

So… it mostly went OK. The crew were quite pleased with their effort and pace, but we need to revise the food situation. Jelly-baby sandwiches don’t seem such a bad idea after all.

　

Oh… and my boat‘s finished.