"There is nothing - absolute NOTHING - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats". That Kenneth Grahame - or should I say Ratty - certainly knew what they were talking about.
A group of 16 of us spent Saturday afternoon canoeing at an extremely leisurely pace down the River Wye from Glasbury, where the hire centre is located, across the border into England to the Boat Inn at Witney. There were a couple of stops - one scheduled (for local real ale in Hay-on-Wye) and one unscheduled (a multiple capsizing episode which saw three canoes submerged, one ending up upside down under several feet of water on the river bed...).
The capsizing and subsequent near-catastrophic rescue operation may have been a bit traumatic at the time, the weather was overcast for the early part of the afternoon and some light-fingered passers-by relieved us of a few lifejackets and a football while we were stopped in Hay, but none of that mattered as we glided gracefully (and drunkenly) along in the early evening sunshine towards a slap-up meal and the campsite at the pub.
Thoroughly recommended, in other words.
(Thanks to Mel for the photo, taken in the aftermath of what has become known as "the incident".)
3 comments:
Sounds like a great afternoon- I must say for people who have just narrowly escaped death by drowning you all look admirably laid-back- clearly the taking of strong drink is to be recommended in preparation for any hair-raising whitewater pursuits, whatever it might say in the Health and Safety manuals. Those lifejackets are overrated as well.
I've only been in one of those contrapions once (it was some outward bound thing with work in Dartmoor). Me and a mate capsized spectacularly at a crucial point during a game of 'canoe basketball' (don't ask) to general mirth...there was just one scary moment of feeling trapped underneath the thing before I emerged, miraculously still with my glasses on. I must say I've never been tempted to repeat the exercise though (or the rock-climbing, or the pot-holing)...
Or "....messing around in boots"
(my preferred hobby one might say)
Jonathan: Strong drink certainly helped cope with events - and surprisingly had nothing to do with how it happened. Pot-holing - definitely not. My brother's recently got into caving - squeezing through tiny spaces in the dark hundreds of feet underground isn't my idea of fun.
Mish: What about messing about in boats while wearing boots and clutching a never-ending gin? (My tipple of choice, incidentally, was a box of Weston's Old Rosie. Delicious if not particularly classy - though I was drinking it out of a tumbler rather than straight out of the tap...)
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