Back on the River Again

I felt that I needed to up the mileage this last week so on Tuesday I put in a five mile session over the usual course using the Bungee for the whole distance. I'd forgotten to take the Garmin so I didn't get a time, which is probably just as well as it was slow, very slow. But it did make me work for every yard and at the end it felt like I'd had a work out.

Thursday I extended to a longer run of ten miles out to Papercourt lock, but without the Bungee. That went quite well at first but pushing against the flow on the river section I ended up tired on the last half of the return leg. The result was 2 : 55 including five portages. Not particularly fast, but not that bad either.

With only a days rest I thought that I may have trouble with yesterday's outing with the club when ten of us set off from Walton bridge to paddle up to Penton Hook lock on the Thames, and return. The yellow warning of fast flow on the stretch up to Penton Hook had just been removed the night before but even so the flow was quite substantial, in fact enough to give me another mile and a half per hour on the return journey's speed.

The weather was sunny at first, then overcast but warm enough to dispense with the cags. But the wind was kicking up a bit more the the 10mph forecasted, and was blustery at times depending on which direction the river meandered. That, with some of the cross currents from weir cuts and other channels, together with pleasure craft wash, made for some interesting moments. At the turnaround at Penton I was trying to get back into the boat from a two foot high jetty, when the coaming of my kayak caught under the lip of the jetty, the boat tilted right over and shipped enough water to make it necessary to have to pull the boat out again and drain it. Luckily I was only half way in and was able to pull myself out before I fell in the water as it tilted over.

The trip back was rather more pleasant than the journey up and a lot quicker thanks to the flow The overall speed wasn't much but at times I'd hit almost seven miles an hour. All in all though it was a useful trip for the learning curve.