Sunshine and a Bit of Encouragement

The Thames and the Wey are still red flagged although parts of the Wey are coming under control again. Not enough though for the club's scheduled outing which was to take place tomorrow morning, to a very pretty part of the river which is still in spate. Unfortunately there's not a lot of choice at the moment with only the Wey navigation part or the Basingstoke Canal available within shooting distance. The club is still rummaging around looking for some place to go tomorrow, but I'm going to take a rain check on it as I've just paddled the Wey again this morning for the third time this week.

And a fine job I made of it too. The Sun was due to break out mid morning and sure enough I had just arrived at New Haw to find blue sky and sunshine. After the poor results earlier in the week I thought I'd keep it to a steady paddle trying for an average time. The flood gates at Walsham must have been open because there was a steady flow against me during the outward leg, but paddling felt easier than the last time and I was able to keep up a fairly steady pace. There was hardly anyone about on the towpath except for a couple of mums pushing their offspring in pushchairs. One even took the kiddie out to show him the strange man in a boat passing slowly by. I felt obliged to give a wave which seemed to please mum more than the youngster.

Anyway, I did my usual multi-point turn at Pyrford lock and headed back with the flow and found myself cracking along quite well. By the time I made it back I had an elapsed time of 1 : 15 just an overall speed of 4.0 mph.

As it was turning out to be such a nice day, and I had a bit of time left to do my short run along the towpath. I expected it to be rather hard as it has been nearly three weeks since I last jogged. I certainly didn't expect to clip any more time off my previous best for the two miles as I had done on the previous occasions. Although I felt it was hard going I found to my surprise I'd knocked off almost a minute. So we do have the occasional day when things go encouragingly right.