The idea was to paddle board from source to sea on The Thames. No idea why this became the idea but that’s what we had.
Andy lived on a beach and had his own paddleboard so was confident.
Danny had never been on a paddleboard and had no idea what it was like so he was confident too.
We arrived at Cricklade and stood ankle deep in the trickle of water that was meant to be the earliest bit of the Thames that would allow you to canoe or paddle on it. It was meant to be deep enough. Our fin scraped across the bottom of the river.
As it turned out there was way to little water. We ducked under trees, pulled ourselves through masses of reeds and after several hours finally got to paddle a bit.
Obviously we stopped at the first pub. Had a pint and got the map out.
We had hardly progressed anywhere.
Literally we had hardly moved. So as we pondered our poor effort so far we worked out how far we were going to have to travel every day to actually finish….nothing like preparation.
To do the journey we would need to paddle 30miles a day. On a river with zero flow. And many distracting pubs. No way this was going to happen in just 5 days.
We slept in pub gardens and on river islands, blagged our way through virtually all the locks (apparently Paddleboards aren’t meant to go through them) and nearly got hit by a canal boat in the pitch black one night (should have packed torches!).
The weather was pretty kind to us most of the way. Andy’s friend joined us one day and we discovered we needed to chill out a bit, loose our haste and enjoy the journey more (she brought a picnic and a punctured paddleboard).
We saw some stunning scenery and wildlife.
A gaggle of geese swooped low over our heads and landed in front of us. Kingfishers we plentify. Stray tennis balls (we called them Wilsons) were common. As were little chinese crayfish (which had apparently once escaped from a restaurant boat and had now taken over, migrated upstream and killed all local cray fish on the river).
We discovered that it was impossible to paddle through a full circle rainbow no matter how hard you tried. Ok we knew it was impossible but it looked so truely spectacular we had to try. Cows would talk back to us if we Moo’d at them.
Danny also discovered he could paddle straighter if he had had a few pints
By the time we reached Henley the weather changed and it pissed down. So we did what people do in Henley. We drank Pimms.
Despite doing a marathon a day we didn’t get as far as we needed to and Andy left in the morning of day 6 as he had to get back to Hong Kong. The weather had also become constantly rubbish but he claimed he wasn’t leaving because of that.
Danny carried on in the rain, mist and fog (what a hero). Once through the Teddington lock the river became tidal. He discovered there was no point fighting the tide and barely got to the side. After an Ice cream and a wait Danny headed off for the last stretch and was rewarded at the end by his wife and kids cheering him on. It was actually quite emotional!
