Dave Cornthwaite | The Creative Explorer

Between June 2nd and June 8th 2010 British Adventurers Dave Cornthwaite and Sarah Outen will take to the water and Stand Up Paddle between Bath and London, a distance of 150 miles. The two are not strangers to this sort of journey, last year Sarah rowed over 4000 miles across the Indian Ocean, and in April 2011 will begin a global circumnavigation from London to London, Via the World! Dave had paddled the length of Australia’s longest river and in 2006 he broke the world record for skateboarding further than anyone else, ever! He’s also planning a world distance record on a Stand Up Paddleboard in 2011.

The pair’s journey will start at Bath’s Top Lock at 10am on Wednesday 2nd June, following the length of the Kennet & Avon canal via Devizes, Pewsey, Hungerford and Reading, before paddling onto the Thames and making their way to London. They will finish at lunchtime by paddling underneath Tower Bridge.

We’d like to invite members of your club to join Sarah and Dave for a stretch of their journey as we pass through your neighbourhood. You could paddle in canoes, kayaks or on Stand Up Paddleboards, or even walk, run or cycle alongside. We’d like everyone joining us to help us raise some funds for our charities.

Dave and Sarah are big supporters of The Blue Mile project. A Blue Mile is a mile travelled on or by the water. If each paddler aims to raise £10 per Blue Mile paddled with Dave and Sarah this would be absolutely wonderful. We are aiming for a total of 1000 Blue Miles and if we achieve our target, this will mean we’ve raised at least £7000 for our charities, which would be amazing!

All donations and sponsorships should be donated online at www.justgiving.com/greatbigpaddle

Finally, Dave and Sarah will be supported by a small and very fun team who will be making a documentary and taking photos of the event. We’d love to hold fundraising events each evening and if you’d be interested in organising one, please take a look at the schedule on www.thegreatbigpaddle.com and get in touch. We’re also organising where can stay each evening, so any help with this would be greatly appreciated!

This event is all about getting people on the water and promoting exercise, water sports and a passion for the environment, so the more people who take part, the better!

We hope you can be involved, and look forward to hearing back from you.

Best wishes

The Bath2London 2010 Team

Email: hello@thegreatbigpaddle.com

Tel: 07872 986084

For full details of the event, please visit www.thegreatbigpaddle.com

To find out more about Sarah, visit www.sarahouten.co.uk

And to learn more about Dave, visit www.davecornthwaite.co.uk

Our Charities

The AV Foundation boosts the quality of school education in several African countries. Funds raised through The Great Big Paddle will be used to install solar and drinking water projects into these schools and their communities.

CoppaFeel works hard to ensure that breast cancer is detected sooner, rather than later. The disease knows no age and has no discrimination, and CoppaFeel encourages healthy conversation and awareness about breast cancer and surrounding issues.

So, it’s here. A month ago Seb Terry and I were preparing to nip across Lake Geneva on Stand Up Paddleboards, and now the final touches have been put to a four part documentary about the journey. To save you looking around, you’ll find them right here:

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

Episode 4

As summer draws in the air warms and the weary paddler is required to zone out, lower head, and go. A lack of water or food doesn’t linger shyly, a frequent burst of ten minutes or so and then I’ll stop to look around, take a sip of water. Then the same again, and again. Although it’s everywhere, the effects of heat sneak up on you. Hydration is the name of the game, and there’s no denying the power of a scoop of Nutella when the old energy levels need a boost. Although the Murray isn’t a technical challenge, it does require a certain amount of positive thinking – endurance psychology is underlined by an ability to deal with what is inevitably to come, and in Australia you’re unable to travel great distances without being reminded of exactly how far there is to go. By road there is a blunt green triangle every 5km showing distance to the next town. Along river, the signs are larger and blue with white writing, but to the South Australian border they are fixed to trees every 2km, after the border, there will be one per km. These are not necessarily a bad thing, indeed, breaking down the larger distance into smaller, more manageable bites pays great dividends to morale.

This November’s temperatures may be unseasonable, and I’d be a fool to say days of over 40 degrees don’t have any effect on this Pommy Paddler, but the human body is remarkably adaptable, especially if there’s a sensible head to coax it in the right direction. Starts become earlier and earlier. Once upon a time in that place called the Upper Murray my good friends and I would be on the water by 10am. Now, I’m stopping for coffee and breakfast at 9am with 20km already under the belt. Hard to believe that five and a half weeks ago I was wading through snow in the Alps, cursing my heavy pack, but now there is nothing to curse, even when weary from a full morning’s effort I step off into the shade of the bush for an afternoon’s rest only to realise my chosen sandbar is also inhabited by a Red Bellied Black, or a Brown, Yes, the onset of summer invites one certainty in Australia, the snakes get on the move, but as with anything once you see a few they become known, not feared. I’ve seen four in the water and two on land to date and am perfectly happy to keep my distance, but magnificent it is to see them glide freely in the wild.

Since my speedboat-laden approach to Echuca the river has been quiet. Two days of rest in Echuca was dearly needed and was made all the more comforting by the hospitality of the Barnes family, who also happened to have a say on who was allowed into the VIP tent at the Echuca Races. Needless to say, a rest day was needed to recover from the rest day, but when the time came to continue on I was joined out of town by twelve youthful paddlers from St Joseph’s College, where I had addressed a couple of classes in the hiatus. Peter Phillips, a teacher from St Jo’s, and his son Tim paddled over 50km with me the next day, too, with wife and Mum Ruth patrolling the banks armed with an Esky full of delights. Two days on I was given an informative and welcome introduction to the town of Barham, which until now I had endlessly confused with Barmah, a week upstream. Turns out I’m not alone in this, Faye and Popsy O’Brien, my Barham hosts, have had post delivered to Barmah, and many a visitor to the area has arrowed themselves to Barmah only to find their meeting/party/friends are nowhere to be found, because they are some 200km away in the other Bar***

Flanked by members of St Joseph's College paddling team

Faye and Popsy (all blokes in Barham have a nickname it seems) toured me around the Koondruck Perricoota Red Gum forest, pointing out their opinions on drought-proofing forests and making their views clear on ‘locking up’ trees in national parks. I’ve heard this line before. National Parks designed to protect Red Gums are bemoaned by many as a bending-over on behalf of the political Greens (political Greens and true Greens, who live and work on the land and therefore have a direct and vested interest in the environment, are often grossly different in approaches), who would rather no trees are felled. State forests need maintenance, though, and without easy access tracks and thinning policies they become a green light to any bushfire. I must point out that I’m still forming my personal opinions on all matters Murray – and how to deal with Red Gum forests certainly falls into that category – but driving around with Faye and Popsy, who are saw millers, couldn’t have more starkly revealed the plight of overpopulated and under-watered forests. Areas that had been thinned (the practice of removing unhealthy trees clumped together tightly with stronger, albeit stressed Gums) were without doubt surviving well. Even in a drought that has lasted more than ten years Red Gums not battling with others for minimal moisture were thriving, green canopies almost fluffy. But there were crowded areas reserved for Willow the Wisp, bony, leafless creatures, suffocating each other, dying. The only sure thing for these forests is that a good flood is needed, but when that will come naturally nobody knows – the forecast is not good.

My environmental lessons in Barham didn’t end with the trees. John ‘Spud’ Lolicato is a rice farmer based near the Wakool River, 20km north. He is a passionate bible of information on irrigation and in the short few hours I spent in the area we covered everything from devastating fish kills on a Wakool tributary (instigated by an unsuccessful government water policy) to the very basis of the Murray Darling’s irrigation system. I’d been to school by the time I talked to John, but he accepted that I wouldn’t be ready to take exams until I had travelled all the way to the sea, there is plenty more to learn.

I was also taken out on the river in a tinny, yes, a boat with a motor. Roger Knight could catch a fish in a puddle, I had been told, and although that seemed like a much easier thing to do than catching one in a river I valued the experience and received yet another opinion that whoever has been declaring that Murray Cod are nearing extinction need to do their homework. Indeed, it took no more than 50 seconds for our first Cod to bite, and although it’s out of season and the little blighter went back in the water it wasn’t the only one snared that evening. Carp, it seems, have had their heyday in the Murray. Long have they been a cuss on the lips of Murray fishermen, but the tables have turned and if the rod-holders I’ve spoken to so far are to be believed, Carp are down, Cod are doing rather well.

In other news, Wilderness Systems have agreed to auction my kayak Nala (Tempest 170) for charity (We are supporting the AV Foundation - www.justgiving.com/greatbigpaddle) at the conclusion of the journey, and the Murray River Expedition received a mention in the Queensland Parliament late last week, wonderful news! For now though, I can’t rest on my laurels, it’s 6pm, the day is fading and I’ve avoided the afternoon heat, it’s time for another 10km. Next stop: Mildura, Tuesday 24th.

As the Murray knows all too well, a journey isn’t necessarily defined by geographical route, but by the people along it and the kindness of strangers reintroduces any traveller to a humanity that is occasionally lost in ordinary day to day life. That said, it’s not always plain sailing, and the hardest moments on a journey like this are often precipitated by humans, too. And that includes myself!

Lunch breaks spent alone below trees that contain koala and baby fill my wonder gauge, and passing banter with riverside campers stands out not for the unpredictability of the occasion, for many conversations are mind-killingly similar, but now and then some of these holidaymakers release a pure gem that warms my cockles. Take for example my first encounter with a chap who had made camp on a beautiful beach not far from Tocumwal. He was noticeable for the fact that he wore nothing bar a set of thick rimmed spectacles, and as he stood to greet me I was grateful for little but the direction he so naturally offered. It was as if nothing was out of place, ‘How ya going mate?’ he chanted.

‘I’m…err…doing well thank you,’ I replied.

‘How far are you going?’ he asked, gesturing at my kayak.

‘All the way,’ I said, half expecting him to engage in some innuendo.

‘Amazing,’ he said, ‘I take my hat off to you.’

I paddled on, not wanting to point out that there wasn’t a hat in sight.

Later that day two men were splashing themselves off another beach, thankfully waist deep in water. One of them was English, as wide as my kayak was long, and he was remarkably stupid. ‘Bloody ‘ell fella, what are you doing then?’

‘He’s swimming,’ said his Australian friend.

‘Ow far you come geeza?’ Stereotypes don’t come much better than this.

‘I’ve come from the very top,’ I said.

‘Where’s the top?’ the Englishman asked, then added, ‘ow far is that?’

‘About 600km away,’ I smiled.

‘Je-Sus! You done all of that today?’

The Australian couldn’t help himself and burst into a fit of girlish giggles, quite bizarre for an enormous barrel of a man. He just jabbed a thumb at his mate and splashed the water with his spare hand. I paddled on with a wave and twenty seconds later I heard an English voice shout, ‘watch out for the crocs!’

‘And the Drop Bears!’ I yelled back, the guffaws following me around the bend.

A few days earlier in Corowa, Gael and I had struck gold, meeting Shaun Whitechurch who runs the local Reconnect  store and the local bakery. ‘Always make friends with the local baker,’ Gael told me wisely with crumbs all over his face. We were down by the Murray, each chewing happily on an egg and bacon roll Shaun had delivered straight to our tents with a smile and a wake-up-call megaphone directed through his van’s window. Shaun’s special delivery appears in our latest Expedition film:

Not much more than a week later I was solo and inching towards Echuca. Victoria. Much of Australia grinds to a standstill as the Melbourne Cup approaches, as the horserace marks the first long weekend of the summer. The Murray became a teeming froth of wakeboards, speedboats, jet skis. I became a nobody, my motor-less craft a target for the new monsters of the water. ‘Get the kayaker’ came the cry, and my eyes widened in disbelief as Nala and I were circled – the official term might be ‘donut’ed’ - by a boat filled with shirtless oafs bearing square jaws and bottles of beer. Not willing to become a soggy product of a hoon-produced whirlpool I turned my camera on them, and remarkably they rushed away in a cloud of bellowing. I persisted through the boat-a-minute waves and ten minutes later my world was a flurry of white water. The same boat was back, this time dragging a wakeboarder. Not an unusual occurrence on this day, may I add, but the boat was barely 10 feet from me and the wakeboarder several feet closer, his arm outstretched towards the camera set up on my kayak’s deck, the wake from the boat already cascading over me. I saw the stubble on his chin, the dandruff in his hair, the grime beneath the nails: he was travelling at 60kmph and attempting at the same time to snatch away my camera. He wiped out a metre from my kayak but I couldn’t react. Stunned and shocked I rocked in the waves and raised my paddle in anger and self-defence; but his job was done, this rat on a sunken board, smirking away. His horse was returning with all of its riders, and I wasn’t about to up the stakes. I politely said ‘thank you’ as I passed, and it was the last I saw of them. Alas, the drama was not over. 10km from Echuca I was hoping the worst of it was gone when a pair of kneeboarders sped down the straight. The one nearest me was glaring, the whites of his eyes fixed upon mine. He adjusted his line, swerved inside and then out, towards me, and his eyes full of menace and an unmoving pencil thin mouth stared me down as he flicked up a heavy spray that peppered Nala and I from bow to stern. His aim was spot on, clearly well practised, and for the second time in half an hour I paddled on cursing every one of the boats to pass, for they had all been tarnished by the same brush. I didn’t feel safe on the river anymore, and Echuca couldn’t come soon enough.

Follow the entire expedition in words, images and film @ www.thegreatbigpaddle.com

Please visit http://www.thegreatbigpaddle.com and donate at http://www.justgiving.com/greatbigpaddle