Dave Cornthwaite | The Creative Explorer

Well, we made it. A few ‘that’s not very far!’ suggestions were tongue-in-cheekily thrown in Sarah and my direction when we announced that we were going to Stand Up Paddle between Bath and London, and in all fairness, the 150 miles didn’t seem to offer any stature alongside some of our past trips.

But, you know what, I’m knackered! Almost as soon as you start paddling with endurance in mind two catchwords become regular visitors to your vocabulary. ‘Flow’: the speed at which the water travels, and ‘Portage’: where you must leave the water and carry your craft around an obstacle.

So with that in mind, we set out on our early June venture, with three days of paddling along the Kennet & Avon canal which seemed proud to offer no flow and over 90 portages, and then we scuttled onto the Thames with our hearts-a-bounding and our hopes were quickly dashed, for the water levels were down and the river crept slowly towards the Channel. In other words, we had a fair bit of work to do.

Let me introduce my paddling partner, Ms Sarah Outen. She has more world records than Mr Guinness, single handedly rowed across the Indian Ocean in 2009, consumes more chocolate bars per hour than any human I’ve ever met, and amongst all this still manages to be quite a nice person. Sarah and I went to the same school - Stamford in Lincolnshire - although we didn’t know each other due to the fact I’m an old fart and she’s a young whippersnapper, but at some point the establishment must have dished up some brussel sprouts laced with steroids and enthusiasm, because we’ve both ended up choosing a life of adventure. That was certainly not on the curriculum.

Although this expedition was raising funds for our selected charities, the AV Foundation and CoppaFeel, we were embarking on this cross-UK paddle as Ambassadors for the Blue Project, a Climate and Oceans initiative designed to encourage passion for the environment through sport. Both Sarah and I share very similar beliefs to Blue and push their message of participation and engagement and every step, Jaques Cousteau said ‘People protect what they love’ and that is especially eveident here. We Blue’s flagship community project, the Blue Mile, asking people to travel a mile without a motor on or beside the water.

Supporting us on the way were George, Sarah’s cousin in law, with us the whole way driving our Spaceship Campervan and making good use of her camera. Also involved for a good dea of the trip was Simon, who has followed me with his camera on previous trips, my lady Em with her clipboard and phone, Ann Slator who was official supplier of lads from Devizes Canoe Club(!) and polar explorer Alex Hibbert, who caught the all important pics on the final day.

Our path through southern Britain was touched on several occasions, ironically, by serendipity (also the name of Sarah’s boat when she rowed the Indian Ocean). On the Henley Straight a cruising boat broke down and we exchanged our paddles for a £20 donation. Past Newbury a schoolteacher who had written to Sarah the evening before appeared from a wood bearing gifts in the form of a bag of Percy Pigs(!), but most importantly an envelope full of paddle signs and good luck messages from Class 3K, to whom Sarah spoke a while back. Finally, on Day 5 dusk was falling and we just happened to be passing when a lady fell off her boat. The banks were high and she was struggling to reach the edge. It took Sarah and I three minutes to lift her out, we daren’t think what might have happened had we not been there. Wonderfully, the lady found us online later and made a £20 donation.

On our Blue Bath2London venture we invited members of the public to join us for a Blue Mile (or fifty) and had a marvellous response. Kayakers from Devizes Canoe Club (special mention here to Edd Dobson who totted up 50 Blue Miles including the last bouncy stretch into London), Stand Up Paddlers (thanks very much to Felipe Allard and Gerard Gray for paddling well over 20 Blue Miles and raising over £350 between them), the official Bath2London support team clocked up endless miles between them and plenty of others joined us en route.

Despite Charley Boorman popping down to wish us good luck, we were nearly denied a triumphant finale. As Sarah and I (and Edd and Mike in their K2 Kayak) approached central London on schedule, the Thames Harbour Master made it clear he wasn’t happy with us paddling in the choppy conditions, which had been made worse by construction work on the bridges and therefore required boats to pass closer to each other. Devastated, Sarah and I pulled over, Westminster and the London Eye already visible. We hauled our boards onto our shoulders and began a three mile walk towards Tower Bridge - if we weren’t going to paddle, we were sure as hell going to walk!

Thankfully, by the time we reached the London Eye the Harbour Master had changed his mind and sent out a boat to escort us - on the water- to our designated finish line. Our delight was quickly masked with the realisation that yes, the Thames in central London is hideously choppy. How neither of us plunged into the grey is beyond me, but I suspect it had something to do with Tower Bridge, lurking a mile down the straight when we began our final leg and finally sucking us beneath its beautiful span. The resulting images, I’m sure you’ll agree, were worth the wait, stress, and yes, even all of the standing up!

My body is less happy than a kitten in a kennel. My muscles don’t ache, they weep. I’m pathetic, but I’m up at six all the same. We’ve been back in the abode of old friends Chris and Dave and Dave and Gem, and they’ve been thrusting hot drinks and warm food our way. Leaving the lair makes things doubly hard.

It has become overwhelmingly obvious why six or seven months of preparation are recommended for this event. It is brutal. I’m not an unfit chap, but I hold my hands up to everybody who completes the DW. From my tortoise-like viewpoint I have witnessed some incredible feats of endurance already, as well as receiving a reminder that my inside-out armadillo mentality (thanks Danny) does not substitute for a lack of physical training, nor paper planning: poor Dan and Em are not looking forward to another day of being put through the portage-seeking mill.

Resisting Danny’s help at a portage

A couple of miles after put-in I’ve paddled clear of Newbury and my upper half has warmed up sufficiently to allow a roughly decent pace. The task at hand is put into perspective when a carbon-boat paddler flies past me at a lock and responds to my ‘good luck mate’ by saying, ‘you too, you’ve got my utmost respect for taking this on in that thing.’ He cast a look over my solemn kayak, then ran away like it was a bad smell.

I can’t let myself think about the mileage today. How the organisers have the gumption to make the second day longer than the first is beyond me, especially since yesterday’s thirty-four miles turned me into a quivering and pale imitation of a man. The thought of another thirty-six is, literally, sickening, so I’ve mentally moulded this second section into one intangible lump of information, just so the figures don’t cause too much upset. As a consequence I’m not paddling from Newbury to Marlow via Reading and Henley today, I’m just paddling somewhere. It still might take a while. 

I can almost smell the Thames. For six hours I’ve been paddling solo, sharing the waterway briefly with only a couple of fast moving kayaks. My right wrist, jarred yesterday during a portage, is causing some discomfort when gripping the paddle but I don’t think it’s slowing me down too much. Periodic joy comes in the form of some flow as the canal approaches Reading, weirs sluice off excess water as portages approach and then when I’m back in the water there is usually a tributary pouring water back into the canal, which whisks me along a couple of miles per hour faster than usual. Only once I’ve experienced this a couple of times do I realise just how tough it can be paddling in still water, self-generating forward momentum, crawling eastwards.

The portages are getting harder. Sometimes there’s a good three foot drop from solid ground to the canal, and as the day goes on and the rain slicks up the cut lowering myself into my surrogate home becomes a task in itself. Thank god I’m alone most of the time, I’m a right state with my elbows and upper arms clutching for grip while my legs flail around madly to find a place in the boat. Sometimes I’m caught out by a passing rambler or even an inquisitive swan, but there comes a point when one must accept that all dignity is lost and for me that point probably passed two hours into Day One. I have no shame remaining. I began wearing clean and harmfully bright bermuda board shorts beneath my blue wind jacket and spraydeck. Twenty-odd miles into Day Two you can’t tell where my shorts end and legs begin, I look like a lit cigar, brown all over, red on top.

Portaging on the canal

Mixed feelings after the last lock before Reading. I say goodbye to Em and Danny knowing I won’t see them for nine miles. My clothes are all soaking and there’s nothing dry remaining. I’m feeling ok but am sodden and cold, and the clock is ticking towards 5pm, with sharp winds gusting around with no apparent schedule. I may have sufficient energy to continue, but I’m becoming more vulnerable to injury as the day wears on, another twenty-five portages have torn the strength out of me. The canal flies through Reading and I whizz with it, soaking up almost torrent-like flow as I paddle through the town-centre under the watchful eye of work-leavers and shoppers and youthful crowds. Even feel a bit like an explorer, passing through by boat and paddle in a world of walkers. And then Reading has gone and I’ve popped over the canal’s last portage, and find myself at a T-Junction: the Kennet & Avon behind me, the Thames awesome in its width opening out ahead. I could probably nip off towards Birmingham with a swift left turn, I thought, and then absent-mindedly pushed out into the river, and took a right.

There’s a quite bizarre portage within the first two hundred metres of the Thames, and I was thoroughly confused when, with the river continuing straight ahead, I was asked to pile out of my banana, recite my crew number, and then walk fifty metres along the bank before crawling in again. As if getting in and out wasn’t already enough of a bother, one eager helper spotted my concern and attempted to swiften my passage back to the water, but only managed to flip my kayak off its wheels. I didn’t have the strength left to harbour strong feelings about the incident, another couple of seconds won’t harm. Poor bloke just stood there looking sheepish.

Four miles and an hour later I was blindingly cold. A consistent drizzle had permeated my every pore and I was quite sure I now resembled a bizarrely dressed prune. After the Kennet & Avon’s restrictive width The Thames had become fascinating and wide, with its well conditioned cruising boats and luxurious riverside residences, but the sheer expanse of the river meant that shelter was nowhere to be seen and the wind drove down the river to delightedly slap me in the face every couple of seconds. Paddling along a wide river took away all my sense of speed, which is always there when you’re a couple of seconds from the bank of a canal. The enormous electronic Thames locks make the canal portages look positively wimpy, which wasn’t good news for my right wrist, which was beginning to spasm as the rest of my body chilled up. I’d be paddling along and suddenly my right hand would just lose its gripping ability and the paddle would spin off over the boat, which was of absolutely no benefit to anyone. Teeth chattering and shoulders tightening, I reached the second Thames lock just as a couple in an inflatable canoe got there. ‘Brilliant,’ I thought, ‘another overtake!’ I was delusional, of course, I hadn’t yet overtaken anyone that day.
‘Are you racing?’ the lockmaster addressed the couple, and they looked at each other as if he’d asked them whether they were rekated. Two heads shook in unison. ‘Do you want to just take the lock down, then?’ asked the lockmaster. They nodded, and the muddy person in the yellow kayak behind them became just that little more depressed, before groaning his craft out of the water and falling back bum-first into the mud, the kayak all over his belly. I was dying for the loo by now, and had also gone a little bit crazy. If yesterday had been hard this was starting to take the biscuit, and as I followed the lockmaster’s finger and wobbled myself awkwardly to the outdoor urinal I realised that 36 hours earlier I’d been in the highest of spirits, fit as a fiddle, and positively gushing with the opportunity to take on the Devizes to Westminster in a big plastic kayak. Fast forward to the present time, and I was moving like a lifetime arthritic, and looked like something out of a swamp movie. My fall from grace was completed when in the urinal I decided in a fit of clarity that the only way to warm myself up was to pee on my hands. Didn’t even bother to take the gloves off, just went for it, four hours of fluid intake emptied itself all over my mits, and only when I’d finished did I look at my outstretched and now slightly discoloured fingers in total and utter disgust. This feeling of negativity towards myself increased when it became apparent that Thames lock toilets don’t involve taps or sinks of any kind. I just trudged out, the lowest of the low, dripping hands dangling at my sides. And of course, they weren’t the faintest bit warmer.

Minutes later, back in my boat and totally past the very small fact that I’d just wee’d on myself, I made the noble move to re-energise with a few dried apricots and a handful of cashews, only to be a bit crestfallen when an awakingly familiar smell eminated from the very fingers that were shovelling healthfoods into my gob.

It couldn’t get much lower, I thought, but twenty minutes later I reached Marsh lock, where Em, Danny and Anna were waiting with warm clothes and new drink, and having no choice but to cross the narrow v-shaped lock by lifting my kayak to shoulder height and shuffling fifteen metres through a congestion of fences and gates I felt a subsidence in my right arm that wasn’t welcome. Once to the other side and surrounded by smiling, supportive faces, I collapsed emotionally. In the past I’ve pushed a skateboard over 80km in a day through searing winds carrying mid 40’s temperatures, my skin and throat cooked and will tested to the limit, but these two days on the water have outstripped anything I’ve been through before. Maybe I didn’t have as much respect for the event as I should have, maybe I underestimated the sheer effort required for multiple portages of a heavy plastic kayak, maybe I overestimated my own ability to complete this event, whatever the reasons, my physical condition had plummeted throughout the two days and my emotions were tailing closely. Typically, Marsh was the busiest of the portages by far and so a good crowd were in place to see a confused mixture of tears  and then laughter as my three stalwarts readily took the piss - I assume to keep my spirits high and ego in check. I was shivering uncontrollably with tears running down my face, doing that thing that men do when they have no physical option but to cry, yet still try their hardest to suck it up which ultimately results in an embarassing burst of sobbing and snot when the emotions rip forth. I felt quite pathetic, but ten minutes later was swathed in new, dry tops and loaded with nuts and chocolate, which gave me hope for the final ten miles.

Back on the water, calamity struck. I hadn’t realised the full extent of damage to my right arm until I’d moved 200 metres away from the lower wharf at Marsh. The beautiful town of Henley borders the Thames at this point, but my right arm, allowed to tighten up after an extended period off the water, took my full attention when each pull of the paddle invited excruciating blasts of pain. It wasn’t long before I realised the problem - I suspected elbow ligament damage with possible a torn muscle - was critical. I was floating mid-Thames, trying again and again in vain to get my right arm moving, disbelieving that it had actually packed up on me.

Stranded so, I was, that all of a sudden there was a horrendous clickety-clack and two six or seven man rowing boats descended, one either side, hulking creatures of the water pulling for all they were worth under the war cry of a micophone’d man on a bicycle who was pelting along the towpath. Their speed just reminded me of my own, but it also gave me an idea. There was no way I was giving up just because I’d lost the use of an arm, so I kept straight using the kayak’s rudder and began to pull with just my left arm, using my body weight in a sort of reverse-rowing motion to supplement the lesser energy of a one-handed paddle.

The remaining nine miles were slow and road access meant that I wasn’t to see Em and Danny up close until the finish point. Having left Newbury not long after 9am I eventually clambered over the lock in Marlow at around 19:20, and then after slight confusion over where I was meant to finish, found my team and two lone officials waiting there in the fading light. 

I’d gone over the time allowance of 10 hours for a day’s paddling, but was given the option of continuing the next day as long as I started at quarter to seven in the morning. Even then, any suspicion that I was becoming a safety risk would result in my disqualification, a certainty were I to pass Teddington and reach the choppy tidal section of the Thames. Later, barely able to clutch a mug of tea in my right hand, we took as a team the decision to pull out of the 2009 Devizes to Westminster. My arm wasn’t healing anytime soon and despite a keeness to continue with one arm there were two overbearing reasons to stop. The first was the almost certain heartbreak of pushing on another 38 miles (with one arm!) only to be disqualified on the last day once I’d reached the tidal section. The second took into account the future of The Great Big Paddle. Continuing would have meant risking considerable long-term injury, and potentially scuppering the rest of the project. Sometimes the hardest decisions need to be taken and in this case sense took precedence over bravado, but there’s now a lingering feeling that I have unfinished business with the DW. The sensation of defeat and failure doesn’t sit comfortably with me, but lessons have been learned, and proof is rife here that any kind of endurance feat should be prepared for fully and properly. Next time, I’ll have no excuses.

The next day the three of us drove back to Wiltshire to recoup on Aslan. As I approached the boat I noticed that it was covered with something colourful. Much peturbed and suspicious of the behaviour of local youths, my fears were put aside, partly, by the shocking truth that Laurie and Maddy from the Family Adventure Store had gone to great lengths to welcome me home post-DW. Aslan, the poor thing, was covered in balloons, and much to my disgust, bunting. Thank you, very much!

Emily’s status reads as such: “Mid Morning, Westminster Bridge, Monday. Bring your friends, banners and bunting! Please bring bunting! Dave hates the stuff but it would make my month!” With this in mind, I’m not sure whether my incentive to reach London on Easter Monday has just become a little weaker. I’ve paddled over 200 miles in the last month in training for this event, but lord knows I can’t stand the bunting. This weekend just got a little harder to call…

In theory, I should be fairly dissatisfied with progress when the twentieth kayak this hour pelts past, leaving me bobbing like a giant rubber duck in their wake. The natural reaction of a man overtaken in a race is pursuit, but this is dashed almost immediately when the slick carbon boats speed away and out of sight in a matter of seconds. My aims again refocused, I am ten miles out of Devizes and battling against not just England’s southern waterways, but against myself, my kayak, and time. But I’m happy with my lot despite being the DW’s equivalent to that bloke in the rhino costume who does the marathon every year. Plus, I’m buoyed by those two overtakes I did a while back, when I whizzed past those girls. Young girls. In big, fat, slow kayaks. I’m not sure they were even in the race, but it felt good all the same, and it definitely made up for me hunkering down in almost last place.

It’s not my natural inclination to race. I’m very competitive, perhaps too much, but have always demonstrated a kind of cunning edginess, whereby I devise a way to compete, but not against anyone else, so no-one can see how bad I am at stuff. Here though, in my first long-distance paddle, it so happens I’m competing in an event that this year has more registered participants than ever before, six hundred and forty eight, to be precise, and all current statistics are pointing at a rather discomforting fact, that with all things considered, I’m going to settle up quite far down that list when the weekend’s trials are over. There are a couple of reasons for this, including a lack of fitness and experience in the sport, the latter of these contributing to what is likely to be the most telling factor on this first challenge of The Great Big Paddle: the kayak.

As seen earlier, I was utterly crap in a carbon K1. I couldn’t get my head around balancing in the thing, hence speed was automatically substituted for stability. Not so much of an issue as my aim was to simply reach Westminster, not win the race, but a stable canoe means a heavy canoe, and between Devizes and Westminster the 77 portages stick their tongue out at heavy canoes, even those with wheels. See, after 30 miles of hard paddling, even pulling a 30 kilogram kayak out of the water becomes an effort, then you have to tip it over onto the wheels (which have been secured stiff in place by Family Adventure Store Terry) and trundle it to the get-in, where the re-tip is followed by a hefty lowering of kayak back into the canal. It is a process worthy of those Christmas programmes with the enormous men lugging concrete balls and pulling articulated trucks along with their teeth. But it’s just that I’m quite slight, and even 200 miles of training paddle hasn’t inflated my arms much beyond Twiglet stage, so as the day wears on I find myself becoming fairly tired and achy. It’s like man flu with a buoyancy aid.

All of this may sound like I’m on the verge of apologising for taking part but please realise I’m merely attempting to paint a picture, and in doing so now must nod towards all of the wonderful (and weird) things one sees when travelling along a canal. Having spent much time upon my good boat Aslan a bit further back along the Kennet & Avon I’m used to some canal oddities, such as the smiling man on a bike playing an accordion, while a plastic pigeon flopped around on a stick attached to his rear rack, but paddling along on Day One of the DW opened my eyes a good deal further. Yes, there are still dead fish belly up. Still the occasional splash of a startled toad. Still swans galore, menacingly sidling up with the silent threat of beak nibble. But firstly, let’s take the inexcusable behaviour of some of the dogs. Clearly their formative training was substituted for regular visits to dog borstal, where dinner times were preceded by fights to the death, extra points for gore. Few times have I been as scared (including one morning waking in the Amazon to every single one of a large spider’s hairy size nines trampling on my face) as the moment three miles past Pewsey where a dirty-white cross between a sheep and a pitbull followed a long session of furious barking by actual hurling itself into the canal to give chase. Having crossed a couple of countries on a yellow longboard I know full well how the colour sends animals into a frenzy, and I took great pleasure in learning that my kayak was well built to outpace even the swiftest doggy paddle. I also like the fact that a swimming dog cannot bark without swallowing seven litres of water at a time, and my satisfaction was heightened only further by the knowledge that the water in this canal is so filthy it can actually melt corrugated iron. That dog is history.

Let’s not let the canines destroy the reputation of all creatures. The swans, in the past touted as potential kayak capsizers, were all very gentlemanly, even the enormous crowd of forty or so somewhere after Hungerford. Another, a lone wanderer deep in the forests of Berkshire, smiled as I approached wearily. He left his resting place on the bank and made for me with such purpose I suspected that my time had come. I made myself big, taking high and reaching strokes, even hissing, but he was not perturbed, even when we came within half a metre of touching. I saw a glint in his swan eye, and he bunched himself up, tucked neck and head into his chest, wiggled his flippery orange feet and streamlined in my wake. Yes, this swan was surfing, and he had done it before. Half a minute and perhaps one hundred metres later, he breathed out a farewell hiss that was too short to contain malice, and left. Quite a wonderful thing to have been privy to, a sporty swan with adrenaline dripping off his feathers.

The DW is the paddling world’s version of an MC Escher. It all looks very pretty at first glance, much because the initial fifteen miles are lockless, you merely paddle straight and hard and by some queer twist of delusion actually begin to look forward to encountering a portage. But when you pass through Pewsey and that first portage comes, another one follows it. And another. And another thirty on Day One. And then you begin to long for empty water despite the ever-growing knots and gripes in your arms and shoulders, for the dreadful realisation that however hard the paddling becomes it is nothing compared to the frantic scrambling of a near-novice trying to pull himself out of a closed cockpit onto a slippery and muddy lock wall, then getting down on his belly to try and haul thirty kilograms of plastic kayak and trolley and survival kit three foot up to dry land. Unleash the strap (because the trolley is strapped to the topside and when in wheely-mode there’s nothing on the smooth hull to hold onto) and half-push-half-pull the giant banana to the end of the portage. Meanwhile, triangular men dressed for a stealth operation whizz in, leap out, pick up their boats with one arm and dash around the lock all in one movement, their support teams posting food boosts into the fast-moving mouth. Quite incredible to see, and it makes me – and Em and Dan, my faithful crew - rather jealous.

Early on Day One. You can tell by the smile.

It’s the portages, not the kayaking, that begin to take a toll by the thirty mile mark. I have four, perhaps five miles left to Newbury but a constant drizzle and the near-impossible navigational puzzle that means my team can’t often make it along country roads to my portages in time, leaves me wet-through and shivering for over an hour. The early stages of hypothermia take hold and at one point I regain focus only when I paddle straight into the riverbank. Amazing how quickly these things grip you, the rapid decline of a body in fatigue when it’s without adequate warmth or shelter. I’m frankly a little scared at my situation, and can barely talk by the time I reach the crew, who are waiting in the rain with new tops and munchies. Dan and Em, not given nearly enough preparation time for this race, have a goose-hunt of a job on their hands to reach me wherever I may be next popping out of my boat, and it’s a godsend when they’re joined by another of our friends, Anna and her boyfriend Tim, who come bearing ‘Go Dave’ banners and smiles. They stagger their portage responsibilities, but still have to endure my frustrations when I portage on the wrong side, or flurry a release of pent-up paddle frustration at the whole caboodle – pain, tiredness, confusion, shivers, damp, hunger, nausea, distance. Tough one to please, me. You almost need a support team for the support team.

By the time I reach the end of Day One I’m in a bit of a state. I never thought I’d be so glad to reach Newbury, and there’s Anna with towels and a warm car. Danny and Em can’t reach the campsite because the roads have just been closed, I don’t dare think what would have happened had Anna not been there. Probably would have dug myself a mud igloo. Right wrist has struggled to hold paddle for the last few miles after a portage-wrenching incident near Hungerford, the thought of going on tomorrow, and the next day, is so close to devastating I’m gulping back the tears. Around me, there are healthy people snuggling down in tents and discussing their five hour paddles from earlier today. I clocked in at 9 hours 11 minutes. Back on the water in 12 hours.

The Devizes to Westminster Canoe Race is secretly famous. The event makes people in the know go ‘oooh, that’s ‘ard,’ but just a few miles from the starting point even a couple of lads paddling along the Kennet & Avon had never heard of the DW. Even though I’m competing in this year’s event I must admit, four months ago I was amongst the DW ignorant, but with about fifteen hours to go until I take my first stroke out of Devizes wharf I already know that whether or not the Devizes to Westminster is well known, it’s going to be one hell of a challenge.

125 miles of paddling is no mean feat, but what sets the DW apart is the portages. Along the way, mainly during the first two days along the canal, there are 77 locks that require a bit of footwork and heavy lifting and it is these obstacles that slow you down and wear you out. That’s not to say the paddling is easy, but as the canal/river stretches on and you slowly pull in the miles, a rhythm takes hold and it becomes second nature fairly quickly. As per most activites (especially for me), it’s thinking that makes things doubly hard, and the portage sections on the DW turn a simple feat of endurance into an ultra-marathon.

My late entry into paddling hasn’t given me time to master the K1 kayak, so I’ll be paddling in a more stable Dagger Cortez, a touring kayak kindly supplied by Dagger and The Family Adventure Store. The Cortez is a foot and a half longer than the Charleston I’ve been training in, but it’s 5cm thinner, which increases its speed through the water by about half a mile per hour on average. The collateral is sheer weight, the Cortez is no K1, which you can lift with one hand. To the contrary, I struggle with two, so I’m forced to add a portable trolley to my DW kit in order to get the Cortez through the portages, which are sometimes up to a mile long.

So, I think the talking is over. It’s been a tough month of training. I’ve paddled over 200 miles in preparation for this thing but have been in my own little vortex, so can’t predict what I’ll be up against this weekend. I know I won’t be able to compete with the majority of paddlers who are cunning enough to have mastered the tippiest of tippy boats, the K1, and I have absolutely no clue even if there will be others attempting the race in non-racing kayaks, like myself. I expect to be faster than the canoes, which are great cumbersome things but ever so romantic, so, in light of all of this, the only challenge I can set myself (apart from the event itself), is a time.

I have 125 miles to paddle and on the water am going to try my damndest to keep up an average speed of 5 miles per hour, which makes 25 hours. But then I have to be realistic about the portages, and finally the 17 mile tidal section between Teddington and Westminster, which will naturally delay me somewhat. All in all, I’m going to aim for 28 hours all in, wish me luck, and if you’re in London on Monday 13th April I’ll be paddling the Thames from Teddington to Westminster to finish around 9-11am, so come on down and check the Twitter site for progress throughout the weekend. Here goes nothing…

‘Would you like a cup of tea?!’ they shouted, ‘A FREE cup of tea?’

This doesn’t seem like something that should happen in the United Kingdom, and my suspicion flares up in the form of a frown. Luckily, for me and them, I was probably too far away for my wrinkled brow to have any damaging effect. Plus, ten miles of paddling had dashed enough canal water/reeds/surface gunge over my head to form a kind of mask, I was quite fortunate that they’d offered me anything at all.

These two young girls, sat there all neatly on the grass, clearly making the most of their school holidays and masquerading as communal picnic’ers, didn’t seem to require funds in exchange for their brew. Besides, I was soaking wet and in a big red kayak, I wasn’t the type to approach for money. They asked again, for by now all I’d managed to do was remove my headphones and stare at them quizzically while my kayak spun out of control, ‘Would you like a FREE cup of tea?’
Well, I suppose it would be rude if I didn’t.

They had their blanket, a jug of milk, a sugar shaker, goodness knows how many cups – both ceramic and plastic – and, of course, a kettle of tea. These girls had come with a plan, and they recounted it to myself and a cyclist who had been wheeling along the towpath only to find a steaming mug of tea thrust at him. Apparently they’d been bored of internet chatting and decided to offer the campers in an adjacent field some tea, but by the time they’d brewed up the campers had already got the kettle on, so Plan B had swiftly turned to a bit of Towpath Free Tea. N & H (goodness knows what the rules are when it comes to writing about young girls who don’t belong to you, so sorry girls, initials it will be unless I receive parental permission to use full names!) are step-sisters with an entrepreneurial streak. It comes to light that they’re not always this philanthropic, last summer they made fifteen pounds by selling squash for 10p a pop to passers-by. ‘We sometimes sell ice-creams for pocket money, too,’ said N, ‘but it feels quite nice to give away tea now and then.’

I made up my mind, right there and then, to finish my paddle as quickly as possible and jog back along the towpath with some money for the pair.

The cyclist disappeared only to be replaced by two walking men. One of them asked where I’d come from and I told him I was training for an endurance journey or two, and then I glugged down my mug, thanked the girls, and paddled off.

Ten minutes and a mile down the canal later, the cyclist was waiting besides Aslan, my boat. ‘Did you see the girls?’ he asked, ‘they were running after you breathlessly shouting “Famous!” and “On TV!” What were they talking about?’
‘Search me,’ I said, ‘where are they?’

Seconds later, they appeared, endlessly panting. ‘Are you famous?’ they asked, ‘those men said you were on TV, and that you were the son of Lord Bath.’
‘Who the smeg is Lord Bath?’
‘We don’t know, are you his son?’
‘No!’
‘Are you going to be on TV, then?’
‘Well, that’s the plan. Where’s all your tea stuff?’
‘Oh, we left it there, it’ll be fine, we just had to come and say hello after we found out that you were famous.’
‘You two are hilarious, I’m not famous at all.’
‘Oh my god, you’re so lucky, I’d love to be famous.’
I just laughed, and lectured them on our silly celebrity-obsessed society and how it’s ok to be recognised for what you’re good at, but not so cool to be famous for just being famous.
‘Yes, but you’re lucky to have a talent that makes you famous,’ they said.
I looked around for my talent, and my fame. Couldn’t see it.
‘You make your own luck, girls.’ They groaned.
‘Why did you decide to kayak a long way?’
‘Take a look at my website, that’ll answer your questions.’
‘You have a website! That’s so cool! You’re famous!’

And it went on, these bright and intelligent young entrepreneur/canal runners, interrogating me about my kayak and skateboard and the Guinness Book of Records, all the while sat on the bank shivering as I tied up my boat in the failing light. At least a couple of times a day I take a look around and ask myself how it came to pass that I be living on a boat in deepest Wiltshire, and then I meet people like these, people who talk to strangers and offer them free tea and are unaffected by the forced solitude of a commuter city, and then I know why I’m here. Because it’s just nicer. The girls make me promise to write about them in my next blog and then skip off down the towpath singing ‘Oh My God we’ve just met someone famous.’

They say you should start training for the Easter weekend Devizes to Westminster race in September. Assuming you’re a newbie to kayak racing, those recommended six months take into account one almost certain fact: that the first month will consist of falling out of the K1 kayak time and time again. The K1, as we’ve already seen, is about as stable as the average Big Brother contestant, and frankly it’s causing me some trouble. This, of course, would be fine were it September, but it’s not, it’s March, late March, and with the DW in less than three weeks I still haven’t managed to get ten metres in the K1 without saying a now familiar hello to the icy depths of the Kennet & Avon. 125 miles from Wiltshire to London is going to take quite a while at this rate.

The Daily Telegraph recently published an article about the DW by Tarquin Cooper, here’s an extract: ‘It is a race so punishing and physically tough that entrants can experience sleep-deprived hallucinations, exhaustion and hypothermia, not to mention the aches, pains, cramps and sores that come from sitting in a confined wet space for more than 24 hours.’

Sounds fun, doesn’t it. Hands up, I admit, this kind of thing doesn’t bother me too much, in fact I have a sneaking suspicion that the folk who embark on these endurance missions actually quite like putting their bodies and minds through the mill. Perhaps they know at some point they’ve been naughty, and that this type of thing is apt self-punishment. I do, however, have some misgivings at this point. Having taken up my first paddle sport just six weeks ago, I certainly haven’t afforded myself ideal conditions for preparation, and this will almost certainly make a very hard event even harder. I’m not, fortunately, competing in the Senior Doubles at the DW, which is undoubtedly the Big One, with racers going the full distance in one go. I’ll be paddling the Senior Singles, which takes on the 125 miles over 4 days, still no mean feat, but more forgiving.

The problem lies herein. In addition to (currently unsuccessful) attempts at mastering the K1, I have still needed to put in the miles. I’ve been doing so in a Dagger Charleston, a touring kayak of around 15ft. The Dagger is at the top of its class for packing your kit away and paddling off into the distance, but it’s not for racing. I can lift a K1 with one hand and rest it on my shoulder, essential for those seventy-something portages in the DW that require you to get out of your boat and run like a madman. The Dagger, however, is much heavier, and although my arms have now started to bulge in what I tell myself are some quite attractive shapes, it still takes me an almighty effort to lift it. Running has never been one of my strong points but doing so while holding a heavy touring kayak aloft might just compress my spine by a couple of inches, and that’s not the way I want to go.

I can average around 5mph over 10 miles in the Dagger, but at full whack a K1 can push a steady 8-11mph. Even for an experienced kayaker, paddling a heavy touring kayak over 125 miles would likely add 8-10 hours to the overall time, compared to the K1. I believe I can complete the DW with my current fitness, but I won’t be able to compete with the front runners. Realistically, considering my freshness to the sport, that is acceptable this time around, but all the same, I’d like to be able to clock a time that I can be happy with, and unless I can master the old K1 it seems that in the last few days before racing I’ll need to adopt a new boat, that sits somewhere between the speed and weight of the K1 and the Dagger. I’ve been lucky enough to have found some wonderful support in the Family Adventure Store and Wiltshire Canoe Club and my plan is to do their faith justice, but with 20 days to go before the gun fires at Devizes Wharf, I am not comfortable with the view.

In August 2006, when I first ventured into Australian airspace en route to Perth from Singapore, the sheer expanse of the Big Red was already a fairly stark reality for me. I’d been looking at maps and pictures of the country for over 18 months, preparing for a bit of an adventure, on a longboard. Knowing I had circa 6000km to skate between Western Australia and Queensland was all very well, but actually gliding over the place, all flat and beige and frankly terrifying in all of its wonderful bareness, well, that got the blood flowing. That time, when I landed in Perth, it was bucketing down. Roadside ditches, barely visible through the rain, were rushing gorges of water and mud. It could have been England.

But that was then, and this is now, and here we are landing in Perth with no board in hold and only the twinkling of a new mission in my veins. It was all rather relaxing. Roads are no longer the focus, I have my mind on rivers and oceans, but first thing’s first, it’s time to meet the parents. The Green Family, primary owners of the girl on my arm, their middle-born, my Emily. Three weeks of vacation spattered with book promoting lay ahead, but what got me, what really got me, was that the Green’s lived by the sea. The ocean, in fact. The Indian Ocean. I have two months until Mission One for The Great Big Paddle, a 125 mile dash from Devizes to Westminster, a paddle race that has been referred to as ‘the common man’s Everest.’ The route may not seem the most exotic (quite rightly) but the DW is world renowned for its ability to test even the most vociferous water-bound adventurers. If I’m not ready for it, I’m not going to finish, it’s that simple. It is recommended to start training for the DW in September. I started kayaking three weeks ago, I have some catching up to do. My aim for this little Australian jaunt is, quite simply, to spend sufficient time on the water to get my arms and shoulders prepared for a fairly intense period of training in the final weeks leading up to the DW. A two mile paddle two weeks ago left me aching all over for a week, it just won’t do. The Green’s have kindly procured a couple of kayaks in preparation and now, spurred on by a bit of time in the sun, it is time to start paddling in earnest.

I adore Western Australia. It just smells different to the East Coast, like a cross between an early summer morning and a walk in the woods. And the roads…well, they’re always going to bring back memories. I skated about 1600km through Western Australia but never south of Perth, yet the highway to Rockingham and chez Green may well have been the Great Eastern, without the water pipe. Leaving the airport the sky was a clear blue and the temperature rising from the early twenties, it’s not even 9am. Em and I were snowed in a fortnight ago, we’ve just landed in heaven.