Day Five
Dunkings and Dead Fish
‘Tomorrow’ offered more than I would have wanted, given the choice. For a start, as I placed one foot into the cockpit of my kayak and lifted the other to follow suit, the stupid thing suddenly rolled precariously and tipped me into the muddy waters of the Thames. It was my first dunking and I wasn’t happy. I hauled myself upright, streaming water and silently cursing to myself. It was an ignominious start to what would prove to be a day of high drama. I had risen early, eaten a banana and muesli bar and packed up the Karot in two trips to the water’s edge, keen to cover as much distance as I could that day.
The grass was soggy from rain during the night and the sky was as low and grey as an inner-city car park. I had pushed the Karot’s nose into the water, leaving the tail end resting on the muddy sloping bank for stability while I climbed in. That was obviously a bad technique and I would have to bale out the inside before I attempted to set off again. With my plastic cup packed in the watertight hold, I looked around for an alternative. I decided to see if Jabba the Hutt could lend me a cloth, so I splashed across the grass, past roosting ducks and foraging hens to the house. It was eerily still, with dark empty windows staring balefully at me through the grey dawn. On the wall of the porch hung an old-fashioned mop so I tip-toed quietly up the steps and unhooked it. I crept surreptitiously back to the boat hoping to mop it out and return it before Jabba the Hutt noticed. By the time I had started mopping out the cockpit and wringing the water onto the grass, I had an audience.
“Are you all right?” Gill from the caravan enquired. “I saw you fall in. Poor you. What will you do now?”
“Oh I’m fine,” I replied as if this was a perfectly normal boarding procedure. “The boat needed cleaning anyway.” I mopped the seat a final time, satisfied that it had done a better job than a mere bale-out with a plastic cup, before returning the mop quietly to the porch of the bridge house.
For my next attempt, I was more careful. Besides, with an audience, I didn’t want to humiliate myself further. I decided not to bother changing into dry clothes as one part of me optimistically hoped they might dry naturally with the heat of my body during the day. The other part of me, the more realistic me, couldn’t be bothered as they would probably only get wet again anyway. My shirt and shorts were made with that special-weave, quick-drying polyester fabric that athletes wear to draw the moisture away from the body and let the skin breath. That’s what it said on the label.
Once again I slid the Karot nose-first into the water while leaving the tail end resting on the bank. I stepped gingerly over the roots that protruded through the mud and balanced myself carefully with one foot inside the cockpit. Leaning forward to swing the other leg in and lower my sodden bum onto the sodden seat, I overstepped and rolled the kayak and myself into the water again.
To say it was getting annoying was an understatement. I stood, waste deep and dripping in the warm water looking at the concerned faces of Gill and her partner, who had walked over to witness an expert kayaker embark on his epic voyage.
“Bother,” I exclaimed with my typical restraint. “It’s never done that before.” Gill from the caravan was busy taking photos. That made me feel good. I rolled the stupid kayak the right side up and dragged it out of the water where I flipped it over to empty it. I walked across the sodden grass to the porch once more and, hoping Jabba the Hutt was still asleep, grabbed the mop off the wall again. I mopped the boat out again and walked back to hang it on the porch, for the second time. I returned to the river bank and slid the stupid thing into the water - again. I slid it in all the way, as I was beginning to wonder if the tail end hadn’t been resting on a lumpy root to cause it to pivot as I climbed in. I stood in the water beside it and entered in the conventional fashion this time, gripping the rear and front of the cockpit opening to maintain my balance. Gill from the caravan continued taking photos throughout.
“Third time lucky,” I grimaced as I successfully lowered myself into the damp squishy seat. I thought the clapping from the river bank was an unnecessary accolade as I pushed off from the bank with as much grace and professionalism as I could muster for someone who had so lamentably demonstrated his aptitude in his chosen sport. Gill from the caravan accompanied me along the length of the campsite frontage taking photos as I pulled myself and my recalcitrant craft upriver.
“I’ll send you some copies!” she shouted as I disappeared into the gloom of an early morning drizzle. Thanks Gill, I look forward to seeing them.
Clifton lock was only a few hundred metres upstream and I arrived at its closed gates five minutes after leaving the campsite. As it was well before the lock keeper would come on duty, I opened the gates myself. Deciding to do it without getting in and out of the Karot after each operation, I climbed out and unravelled the blue rope wrapped around the front and walked the kayak into the open lock, where I tied it to a bollard before shutting the gates behind it. All that remained was to open the head sluices at the control board at the top of the lock. Once the levels had equalised, I pressed the button that said ‘open gates’ and watched as the great wooden doors swung apart. I walked the Karot to the mooring bank outside the lock and re-wrapped the rope around its nose and climbed into the cockpit.
The great cooling towers of Didcot power station loomed out of the mist ahead as I paddled down the lock cut. Passing under a very Victorian, arched steel railway bridge at Appleford, I looked out for markers along the long haul around the great sweeping curve of the river. The next was a procession of power cables crossing a few hundred metres ahead. I passed slowly under those, looking out for the road bridge at Culham, then the narrow lock itself. It was just gone nine o’clock, so the lock keeper was on duty when I arrived and I was let through without having to disembark. I had covered three miles in over an hour.
Culham, my well-researched itinerary told me, was the site of the Culham Science Centre where a particle accelerator has spent the last half century trying to created nuclear fusion safely. I don’t remember any headlines saying they had succeeded, so I’m guessing we can’t expect cheap, virtually free and totally environmentally-friendly energy any day now. Oliver would have plenty of time to get in with the other rocket scientists and invent cold fusion.
I encountered no-one. A grey sky and a fine drizzle did their best to dampen my spirits. They failed, as I had goals to achieve and sights to see. But not at Abingdon. I was keen to pass through this riverside town, cover the big left curve around Radley and get to Sandford-on-Thames, halfway up the straight stretch to Oxford, where I thought would be a good place for lunch. After Culham, I finally turned my back on the steaming stacks of Didcot.
The paddling was hard and relentless through Abingdon. The town, I discovered, was about as architecturally inspiring as a council estate on a wet weekend. It was devoid of merit or note. Dismal streets of tedious terraced houses fronting one of the world’s great rivers. What a waste of real estate. The rain drizzled over the scene in a melancholic haze. There should have been a cut in the bow of the river at Abingdon that cast it adrift on a forgotten backwater. It would have saved me time and tedium. I wanted to be past Abingdon and sitting in the welcoming pub enjoying lunch.
I was still very wet but warm, despite the rain. My lower body was cocooned in a steaming fug beneath my splash guard. My upper body was glowing with exertion. It was hard. It was unremitting. There was no joy in my Sisyphean labour. Like crawling up a giant sand dune and slipping backwards with each step only to repeat the upwards trudge with no end in sight.
Abingdon lock gave me a pause. A yellow board was on display on the downstream gates. It read: ‘CAUTION: STREAM INCREASING’. No kidding, I thought. You should see what it feels like from down here. I pulled into the opening gates as the lock keeper operated the controls above. It was five past ten.
“I’ve just put the warning board out,” he shouted. “Did you see it?”
“Yes,” I replied cautiously, not being sure what he was implying.
“We’ve opened the weir sluices to reduce the river level. It means the stream is increasing.”
“I noticed,” I replied conversationally.
“You shouldn’t be on the water,” he persisted. “I have to recommend that you get out of the water.”
“I’ll be OK,” I replied. “I’ve made it this far and I’ve handled the current OK.”
“I know, you look like a competent paddler, it’s just that I’m legally obliged to tell you.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it,” I replied as light-heartedly as I could. “But I need to get through Oxford today and camp at Eynsham tonight. I’m on a schedule.”
“OK, good luck. They’ll warn you again at Sandford.”
Terrific, I thought as I shouted ‘thank you’ and pulled out of the lock. Now I’ve got lock keepers to fight against all the way up river. I paddled up past the weir stream and hugged the bank all the way around the leftward curve of the river, passing under Nuneham railway bridge, until it straightened out at the grey pile of Nuneham House a mile and a half further on.
The stream against the bank was marginally less strong than in the centre, or at least it looked it from my position brushing the reeds and ducking under rain sodden branches. At Nuneham House, set high up behind a sloping lawn amidst a display of sheltering trees, I crossed over to the right bank. Midstream was a roiling, slithering conveyor belt of angry brown water carrying, I began to notice, various items of flotsam. A log bumped my hull in confirmation. It wasn’t any old bit of broken branch, but a length of milled log, pointed at one end. A log that was made for a purpose, the kind employed in buttressing a low earth wall or bank. Next, a rubber tyre swept past, then various plastic items: a water bottle, a lampshade, an orange boat fender. I began to wonder what was happening upstream. Perhaps a tornado had ripped through a caravan park? Or an avalanche had swept through a village carrying all with it? I expected to see the bodies of dead sailors soon.
However, a dead fish did, indeed, float past. Large, broad and broken. Mottled silver and black. Its tail was torn, its scales shredded and its back arched in a deathly contortion. I thought it a coincidence, but it was soon followed by another that bumped passed my hull and, a short time later, yet another, smaller one. I wasn’t sure what they were called and thought of the surly fisherman I had encountered yesterday and his unwillingness to educate me.
I ploughed on though the wet and the damp and the buffeting wind. At times it seemed as if I was getting nowhere. No movement, just a slowly changing river bank. Pull! Pull! Pull! Pull! I urged myself on. Head down and thoughts of nothing but reaching the pub at Sandford. My glasses speckled with droplets of water. My vision limited to the orange hull and the brown water in front. How did it come to this, my dream trip up the Thames!? Think of those days in summer. Those sun-drenched idylls on sparkling water with dancing insects and never a breeze. Of easy speed and happy encounters. When the paddles lapped poetically and brief pauses to observe a song bird in the reeds meant floating gently in the same place while making an identification.
Sandford. Sandford. I’ve got to get to Sandford. Three more power pylons to go. Under the next one striding across the fields and river banks lined with reeds. Two more to go. A copse of trees on the left heralded the next one. It took an age to crawl under those wires as the final cables and Sandford lock crept into view a short distance ahead. I limped into the lock with its welcoming lock keeper and not-so-welcoming yellow board.
“You shouldn’t be on the river,” he stated. “The stream is increasing. We put the warnings out this morning.”
“I know. I saw one at Abingdon,” I replied.
“No-one is out today,” he added. “The current is too strong.”
“I wondered where everyone was. I haven’t passed a soul all day.”
“We had thirty millimetres of rain yesterday and we’re expecting another sixty today. It’s not a good time to be out on the river, even in a power boat,” he continued. If he kept this up, I ran the risk of getting depressed, so I changed the subject.
“I hope the pub is open, I’ve been looking forward to lunch all day.”
“The Kings Arms. Yes, you can pull up over there by the car park,” he said, pointing to the pub car park on the river bank opposite the lock. I already knew where I would tie up as I had started a day trip from Sandford a couple of months ago when I had made my way upstream to Osney lock, with a side excursion up the Cherwell amongst the carefree punts.
I thanked the lock keeper and swung over to the right bank where I pulled up under an overhanging tree at the end of the car park. It was quarter past twelve. It had taken me over four and a half hours to go eight miles. I lifted myself onto the bank, tying the Karot to a branch of the nearby tree. Taking my day bag containing my money, Swiss Army knife and redundant sun glasses out of the cockpit, I splashed through the beer garden to the pub entrance, thankful finally to be out of the rain. I leant my paddle against the doorframe and stood in the stoop for a minute so the water would drip onto the mat before I entered. Heads turned, but not in a good way, as I walked across the room to the bar. I was an alarming apparition in fluorescent yellow lycra top, red buoyancy jacket, black shorts and sandals. Most of the customers were in suits, sitting around tables sipping non-alcoholic drinks, trying to act serious and businesslike.
“I hope you’re doing food, “ I said. “I need something hot and filling.”
“Here’s the menu. Help yourself,” the barman replied. “Would you like something to drink while you’re waiting?”
As tempting as this sounded, I didn’t want alcohol as I didn’t fancy collapsing into the Karot under a dripping tree tonight. So I settled for a large diet Coke and ordered soup and a hamburger. I replaced the upholstered chair at a spare table with a wooden one from over by the door, so that my wet clothes wouldn’t damage it. It was when I sat down and took my first sip of Coke that I realised how wet and cold I was. The thought of sitting at that table, shivering with cold and fatigue for the next forty minutes suddenly seemed foolhardy. A spare change of clothes was tucked up nice and warm in the waterproof hold of the Karot just waiting for this situation. I told the barman what I was going to do and walked back to the Karot to retrieve them. I smiled apologetically as I re-entered the pub and walked though to the toilets at the back. Once inside, I peeled off my top and took off my soaking shorts and stood there, towelling myself hurriedly before a customer walked in to see a naked man drying himself in front of the mirror. I carefully rolled up my wet clothes and placed them to one side before pulling on the sports shirt and shorts that I had so laboriously dried at the campsite the previous night. That felt better.
It was when I gathered up my wet clothes and walked out of the toilet, that I noticed the sign on the door. It said ‘Wenches’. That would explain why there were no urinals. I scurried self-consciously back to my table where I asked for a plastic shopping bag from a passing barmaid to put my wet clothes in.
The soup arrived, warm and aromatic, smelling of herbs and heartiness. Then the burger, plump and steaming and dripping with melting cheese. Strangely, I was not hungry after the soup, but ate as much of the burger as I could, feeling my body warming and my strength returning. I studied my map, read my itinerary notes, putting off the inevitable return to the wet cockpit.
It was only ten miles to Eynsham lock and the campsite on the island there. I would have successfully passed the last conurbation of my trip and entered the stretch of river I had been longing for. Nothing but open countryside and welcoming villages. Ten miles would have been nothing any other week. A couple of good hours paddling and I would be there. I wasn’t so sure today and accepted that I would have to put in a bit more hard work than normal to achieve my goal. But even at today’s speed, I should be at Eynsham by four.
But first to get through Oxford, where the river narrows to a channel between the concrete walls that lined the riverside streets of the town. Iffley lock, then Osney, then Godstow and finally Eynsham. Four locks to maintain my new schedule and set me up for the final day’s paddle to Lechlade.
I stepped out of the warm pub in my dry clothes and splashed across the courtyard to where the Karot was tied. Once I had loaded up and pulled on the splash guard, I dropped resignedly into the damp cockpit and fastened it around the rim. I pushed off from the bank, full of food and optimism, feeling the wet seat slowly soak through my dry shorts and the rain slowly dribble down my neck to my dry top. I paddled up through Sandford Pool past the island and made painstaking progress to a sharp left hand bend in the river before inching under the rusty steel arches of Kennington railway bridge. Boats sat disconsolately against sheltering banks in the rain. On my left, fields and flat land stretched off into a grey mist beyond. My parka hood was over my head and the pitter patter of rain against my ears accompanied the splashing of my paddles.
I passed under the Oxford ring road bridge, knowing that somewhere off to my left was Edmund’s university. I had driven him back to his digs on the Harcourt campus many times, taking the A34 trunk road up to Harcourt Hill and calling in to the local supermarket before unloading boy and provisions into his untidy little room at the end of the corridor.
A hundred metres further on lay Iffley lock with its grey stone cottage. A wooden footbridge on the left arched over a stream that lead to a portage ramp. A red board was out when I dragged myself up to the gates. Not unexpectedly, they were closed, but the lock keeper came out as if he was expecting me. Had Sandford lock phoned him? Any fears that he would prevent me going through for my own safety were dispelled when the gates slowly yawned open. Perhaps the idea was to trap me inside and not let me out the top end? He shouted down to me pointing out the red board.
“I know,” I acknowledged, “but I’ve come this far.”
“It will be worse upstream,” he continued. “You’ve got the Folly Bridge channel and the narrows at Friars Wharf where the canal comes in. Gets a bit hairy there when the river’s like this.”
“I’ll be OK,” I replied through gritted teeth.
“I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Your shouldn’t be out on this.”
“I’ve been doing this for years. I’ll be OK,” I insisted. “I have to go on. I’ve got places to go, people to meet.”
“Well, you wait and see. It’s not good up there. I’ve been talking to Osney and they’ve opened up the weir sluices,” he replied as the lock filled with water and I was raised up. The wind whipped his storm jacket as he walked the short distance to the control board and opened the head gates.
“I’ll tell you what, go as far as you can and if you get into any difficulty, come back here. You can spend the night on the island here and think about it.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it,” I readily agreed before he got even more insistent. “I’ll let you know.” I dragged myself out of the lock into the calmer waters above, shouting thank you and trying to look competent and strong as I powered my way upstream.
“See you soon,” he shouted after me hopefully. I already had my head down and was pulling hard to reach the right bank where I would negotiate the bend ahead and disappear from his view. It was half past two.
The sky was a bruised brown from horizon to horizon and a stiff wind roughened the surface of the water. On either side were fields and occasional trees. The Thames path was on the left but no walkers were out at this point. All tucked up warm and dry at home. I saw no-one as I passed under the broad arch of Donnington bridge and slogged on up through a series of bends to the entrance of the Cherwell beside a row of boathouses. Progress was agonizingly slow. Beyond were the dreaming spires of Academe but I wasn’t interested. They could dream all they liked, they weren’t helping to get me any closer to my destination. My world was confined to the snug cockpit of the Karot and the river immediately ahead. I was thinking of nothing, just the relentless ‘splurgh’, ‘splurgh’, ‘splurgh’, ‘splurgh’ as each paddle dragged through the water. I remembered my rhyme:
‘The hard way on
is better done,
than easy life
that’s never fought,
nor easy race
that’s always won.’
The slow forward motion was barely discernible unless I fixed my eyes on a spot on the bank and checked it a few minutes later to confirm that it was behind me. I stayed against the right bank after the Cherwell. A couple of students ambled past, hunched against the wind and rain. Soon they were gone, disappearing into the drizzle ahead. What were they doing out on a day like this, I wondered? It’s Friday, they should be in class, or studying.
As I approached the narrow channel through the city, the brown water began moving faster against me. I increased my rate and applied more power to each stroke, telling myself that I would only have to keep this up until I was past Osney, where the river would open up and take on a more gentle nature. Folly Bridge, that the lock keeper at Iffley had warned me about, soon came into view. It remained ahead of me for what seemed like hours as I slogged towards it. I knew this was the centre of the town, where the pubs spilled their occupants out onto the river bank and towpaths on sunny summer days. No such scene today. The buildings were brown and empty and glistening with rain. No happy shoppers lined the balustrades of that ancient bridge as it choked the channel beneath its grey stone arches. I pulled myself across to the left bank for the approach, past a retired tourist boat moored against a jetty and into the rushing torrent beneath the bridge.
Folly Bridge comprised three low arches, each about eight metres wide sitting solidly on a channel that was barley thirty metres across. From my position downstream, it looked like the narrowest point of the river so far. On the upstream side, the water was creating a bow wave at the top of the pedestals before erupting past on either side and pouring down through the constricted channels. It was impossible to pause, to slow my pace. Like a salmon leaping the rapids, I increased my speed and power in a frantic surge of energy, realising that I couldn’t not get through. I couldn’t let an old Oxford bridge defeat me. I couldn’t even guess how fast the stream was flowing, four, five, six miles an hour? I counted the strokes. Hard and fast. No pause. No let up. One two three four five six. I kept counting each stroke. I reached a hundred as I inched under the left hand arch. And on and on I thrashed!
‘To carry on
And on and on
Further on
And then some more
Always strong
Always sure’.
The stream flooded against me like a living thing, a seething brown serpent doing its best to swallow me. I must have looked insanely stupid under that arch, barely making any progress yet thrashing the surface of the water with flashing paddles like a mad thing.
I tried to think of stuff to spur me on. My wife. My children. What would they think? If they saw me now, would they laugh? Would they be proud of me or think I was a daft daddy? “Andrew, you be careful,” Carolyn would say. “Dad, wouldn’t it be better to get out and carry it around the bridge?” from Roddy. “Hee hee! You look well mental doing that!” Amelia would say. “Way to go, Dad,” from Ed. If pressed, Oliver would say something like, “Dad, what do you think you’re doing? You haven’t canoed in your life!” They don’t know me as well as children should know their father. Do they ever think well of me? “Of course they do, but they’ve got lives of their own,” Carolyn tells me when she sees my pain. Deep down, I believe her. It had been the same with my life. After I had left home and gone down to Auckland and university, I hardly had anything more to do with my parents. Never sent birthday cards and never received any. It was a strange life that was little understood by an adolescent Andrew trying to make his own way in the world. I didn’t even recognise my own parents impending divorce as I left for England. But I think of them now. Now that they’re not here. Now that I’ve got Oliver, Edmund, Roddy, Amelia to remind me.
I grunted each syllable of their names in time with each stroke of the paddle. Oli-ver! Ed-mund! Rod-dy! Mi-a!
“They love you,” Carolyn reassures me. I know. They didn’t chose the life they have, it was thrust upon them when the recession of the 1990s changed everything. News of divorce, bankruptcies and suicide was our daily fare. Marriages were breaking like toys after Christmas and several of my friends added to the statistics. I had been fighting the adverse economical tide for months, so when I joined the club, we would meet for drinks in a state of shock, dazed and wondering why the wives seemed to get going when the going got tough. I was always good with words, just rubbish at turning them into money when my family needed it most.
I finally broke out from under the arch where the pressure of the stream relented marginally and the boat stopped rocking so violently. I nevertheless had to keep up a strong pace for the confluence ahead.
The channel took a sharp right hand turn beyond Folly bridge and narrowed where it was squeezed in by the streets of the town. I inched on upstream hugging the wall, past where the Seacourt Stream and the Oxford canal entered, thrashing on past wet streets and tedious terraced houses. No-one was about to witness my efforts. It made no difference whether I hugged the concrete wall or battled on midstream, the surface was a roiling torrent on both sides of the river. I knew there would be no pause until I passed through Osney lock. But I had to get there first. I quickly looked at my watch. It was quarter past three. Forty five minutes to cover less than two miles. I couldn’t be bothered doing the maths, but knew that it wasn’t good. I was paddling for my life and nothing was going to stop me. My thin parka clung to my arms and my hat dripped water onto my face. My sprained wrist was hurting with every pull and my back ached for the first time.
I thought of the river ahead, the gentle beauty of the Cotswolds and I remembered the broad calm of the river at Teddington with clouds scudding across the sky and swans gliding out to greet me. I yearned for tonight’s campsite and urged myself on with the thought of a sweet cigar and a smoky Laphroaig sitting at the doorway of my tent congratulating myself on a goal achieved.
I passed under the footbridge at Friars Wharf a hundred metres upstream of Folly bridge and inched on towards an old steel girder bridge. The river flowed relentlessly past carrying a bobbing barrage of branches and bottles. It twisted left then right, then left again. I crept past the entrance of the Oxford Canal, paddling like fury for every inch gained. Fighting my way across the channel at each turn, I was barely in control of the kayak as the midstream current attempted to twist the prow around and sweep me away. It seemed like an age reaching the Osney railway bridge and it offered me no respite. Instead, the current increased as I got closer to the lock ahead. The weir stream off to the left was unleashing another torrent against me as I crawled towards the lock gates. The rain had eased but the low clouds nevertheless threatened more.
“I bet you didn’t expect to see me?” I shouted as I pulled to a stop below the gates, stretching my arms forward then backwards, rolling my sprained wrist and dragging it in the water to relieve the pain.
“I did. Iffley phoned,” the lock keeper shouted back. “What do you think you are doing out today?!”
I was a bit taken aback and in no mood to argue. “The best I can,” I replied. “Shame about the weather.”
“Are you mad?!,” he shouted down at me. “The stream is increasing. We’ve had a month’s worth of rain already in the first week of September,” he replied.
“Is that right?”
“Yes, that’s right,” he insisted. “Sir, you really shouldn’t be out today. I advise you to get out of the water.” He was nevertheless opening the gates.
“It’s not that bad is it?” I replied. I paddled through the gates with ease now that I was out of the current. It was an enjoyable experience. My position low down in the lock also gave me some respite from the wind.
“Have you seen what the river is doing?” he continued. “We’ve got red boards out. The weir sluices are open.” He stood there glaring down at me from under bushy grey eyebrows and yellow sou’wester as the brown water foamed around me. I felt small and vulnerable suddenly in the middle of his lock. No-one else was about on the river bank. The footpath was slick with rain. Everyone was in warm homes and offices, safe and unthreatened. Once I got to Eynsham, so would I be.
“I haven’t got much further to go today,” I said. “I just need to get to Eynsham. I can camp at Eynsham and then I’ll see how it goes from there.” When the water levels equalised, I held on to the lock wall to steady myself.
“Eynsham? Do you expect to get to Eynsham,” he said. “Sir, my advise is not to go any further. That’s my advice and, as lock keeper, I am obliged to tell you.”
“I know what it’s like,” I replied testily. “I’ve been paddling up the river for five days. I know what it’s like. I’m all right. I can do it.”
“Sir, have you seen what the river is doing up there?”
He was starting to annoy me. Staring to undermine my confidence. So far, I hadn’t had any doubts and I didn’t want any now.
“It can’t be worse than down there,” I said, indicating the stretch I had just battled up. “I must admit, it got pretty hairy through Folly Bridge though. But I’ll be OK. Don’t worry about me.”
“You may be an experienced paddler,” he admitted. “but I repeat, I strongly urge you to get out and look for yourself.”
Thinking that the only way to appease him was to do as he said, I agreed.
“Can I go through and look from up there?” I asked, hoping that at least he couldn’t stop me once I was through his lock.
“All right. But be careful. Come through and tie up on the right immediately outside the gate. Just pull up over there,” he instructed, pointing to a walkway just beyond the lock gates.
The upstream gates slowly swung open to reveal something I had never expected to see on the Thames. Normally, the gates swing slowly apart and the water on the upstream side is as still as the water in the lock and I glide gently out. But not now. The pressure that had been building up behind the closed gates was suddenly released and a surge of water rushed headlong towards me like a small tidal bore. I steadied myself against the wave until it bounced off the closed rear doors. But ahead, was the real shock. Through the open gates I could see the stretch of brown river flanked on the left by two vast weirs, one after the other off into the distance. The current frothed and rolled towards me down the centre of the river before suddenly being jerked sideways to cascade over the edge. It was like something out of an Indiana Jones movie just before a riverboat and all its occupants plunge screaming over the lip of a giant cataract into the frothing maelstrom below. I gulped, not even sure if I could get to where the lock keeper had told me to tie up. I gingerly hugged the right bank to avoid the pull of the current over the weir system. The channel looked only about ten meters wide here and the sideways pull was fierce. I inched along the walkway and grabbed the first bollard I came to. Ahead, the river curved around to the right so I was going to have to get out and walk the remainder of the distance along the walkway if I wanted to see any further.
“Now get out and take a look,” the lock keeper shouted across. “Tell me what you think.” I reluctantly dragged myself out of the cockpit and onto the walkway, trembling at the sudden release of tension. I was hoping to see a broad swathe of calm water where the current was lessened by the increasing breadth of the river. As I moved along that walkway, angrily kicking aside two sleeping mallards along the way, each step revealed the same narrow ribbon of seething brown water advancing towards me. Finally, I could see as far as was possible before the thing twisted off between narrow banks lined with dripping trees a quarter of a mile further upstream. More of the same. No broad gentle pool or lazily meandering river opening out to welcome me home. I turned to look questioningly to the lock keeper.
“How far is it like that?” I asked.
“It’s like that all the way up to Port Meadow,” he confirmed. “It funnels through that narrow channel for another mile and a half further on.”
“But past that? Surely this far upstream, there’s not much coming into the Thames?” I pleaded. “It can’t get any worse can it?” I was trying to think logically. I only had forty miles to go. The shorter the river, the fewer the tributaries feeding it.
He corrected my geography. “You’ve got two of the biggest. The Windrush and the Evenlode come in up there.”
I looked at my little Karot tied forlornly against the walkway and remembered all we had been through. I thought of Carolyn meeting me in the Cotswolds on Sunday. Organising friends and family for my triumphant arrival at the Riverside pub in Lechlade. My family. I thought of my lovely children waiting to greet me, watching the river downstream for the orange speck that was their colourful father. Greeting me with teenage awkwardness and reluctant pride, bewildered by the popularity of their heroic parent.
“Listen to me,” the lock keeper shouted. “There’s red boards out all the way to Lechlade. If you think you can do it, go ahead. I don’t want to be responsible. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Bother, I thought. As I stood there transfixed with indecision, I felt myself sagging within, like a balloon slowly deflating. I hadn’t realised how exhausted I was from the morning’s exertions. Almost five hours hard crawl over the ten miles from Clifton Hampden to Sandford-on-Thames, then a two hour slog up through Oxford against the strongest currents of the trip. Would I have the energy to tackle another six miles of this? Another three hours? I looked at the raging weirs opposite and imagined myself weakened from exhaustion with no strength left to prevent myself being pulled over. Or if I did manage to push on past those cataracts, would I slowly grind to a halt further upstream without the strength or the will to go further? I couldn’t sit still for days on end in the vain hope of the river subsiding. There had to be some time limit to my trip.
More importantly, I didn’t want to give the lock keeper the satisfaction of reading in the local paper about my broken body being washed up downstream in a tangle of splintered plastic. I didn’t want my epitaph to read, ‘He should have listened’. My arms drop to my side and my shoulders sagged. I felt my breath fall to a whimper and disappointment flooded through me like a wave of acid.
I suddenly realised that this was how it was going to end and I knew I wasn’t going to be happy about it. I had planned a gentle paddle up a benign river while raising money for my favourite charity. A to B. Teddington to Lechlade. Nothing more demanding than that. What had happened was an unexpectedly challenging journey that had turned into a dual between nature and man. In a fight, nature always won. It had today.
I turned to the lock keeper. “OK, you win,” I said but knew that I was really talking to a river that had betrayed me.
I trudged back to the Karot, slumped on the wet metal walkway and, eyes stinging with regret, phoned my wife.
After five days, ninety five miles, forty eight bridges and thirty two locks, I was stopped by the English weather. An unseasonable September storm sweeping up the west coast of England had turned my idyllic meander up a gentle Thames into an increasingly exhausting battle against a raging monster. It was the end of my Thames odyssey. The conclusion of my relationship with a river that I thought was my friend. Suddenly, all my memories had no celebrated ending to glorify them. Memories of talking to the ducks, chatting to pretty blondes, cursing rude fishermen and shouting at the tempestuous heavens. Of listening to winged monsters flying overhead in the night. Of sleeping with honking geese and hurrying trains. Of dining with my family and friends. Of locks. Oh the innumerable locks and countless bridges! Slowly crawling up to the next bridge, slowly creeping under it, slowly pulling out the other side. Of lock keepers and assistant lock keepers. Some friendly, some formal. Charming and chatty, gruff and gloomy in turn. Memories of paddling up to those dank grey gates. The long wait. The opening inwards and paddling through. The idle banter while it fills and the cheery goodbye as I emerge from the other end.
So my expedition came to a grinding halt on the damp bank of an unremarkable lock in a unmemorable back street of a city whose only relevance to my life up until now was being the temporary home of my second son.
Fifteen minutes later, I was sitting in a nearby pub, shivering with cold and exhaustion, watching unemployed men playing pool and waiting for Carolyn and her brother Andy to collect me.
Dunkings and Dead Fish
‘Tomorrow’ offered more than I would have wanted, given the choice. For a start, as I placed one foot into the cockpit of my kayak and lifted the other to follow suit, the stupid thing suddenly rolled precariously and tipped me into the muddy waters of the Thames. It was my first dunking and I wasn’t happy. I hauled myself upright, streaming water and silently cursing to myself. It was an ignominious start to what would prove to be a day of high drama. I had risen early, eaten a banana and muesli bar and packed up the Karot in two trips to the water’s edge, keen to cover as much distance as I could that day.
The grass was soggy from rain during the night and the sky was as low and grey as an inner-city car park. I had pushed the Karot’s nose into the water, leaving the tail end resting on the muddy sloping bank for stability while I climbed in. That was obviously a bad technique and I would have to bale out the inside before I attempted to set off again. With my plastic cup packed in the watertight hold, I looked around for an alternative. I decided to see if Jabba the Hutt could lend me a cloth, so I splashed across the grass, past roosting ducks and foraging hens to the house. It was eerily still, with dark empty windows staring balefully at me through the grey dawn. On the wall of the porch hung an old-fashioned mop so I tip-toed quietly up the steps and unhooked it. I crept surreptitiously back to the boat hoping to mop it out and return it before Jabba the Hutt noticed. By the time I had started mopping out the cockpit and wringing the water onto the grass, I had an audience.
“Are you all right?” Gill from the caravan enquired. “I saw you fall in. Poor you. What will you do now?”
“Oh I’m fine,” I replied as if this was a perfectly normal boarding procedure. “The boat needed cleaning anyway.” I mopped the seat a final time, satisfied that it had done a better job than a mere bale-out with a plastic cup, before returning the mop quietly to the porch of the bridge house.
For my next attempt, I was more careful. Besides, with an audience, I didn’t want to humiliate myself further. I decided not to bother changing into dry clothes as one part of me optimistically hoped they might dry naturally with the heat of my body during the day. The other part of me, the more realistic me, couldn’t be bothered as they would probably only get wet again anyway. My shirt and shorts were made with that special-weave, quick-drying polyester fabric that athletes wear to draw the moisture away from the body and let the skin breath. That’s what it said on the label.
Once again I slid the Karot nose-first into the water while leaving the tail end resting on the bank. I stepped gingerly over the roots that protruded through the mud and balanced myself carefully with one foot inside the cockpit. Leaning forward to swing the other leg in and lower my sodden bum onto the sodden seat, I overstepped and rolled the kayak and myself into the water again.
To say it was getting annoying was an understatement. I stood, waste deep and dripping in the warm water looking at the concerned faces of Gill and her partner, who had walked over to witness an expert kayaker embark on his epic voyage.
“Bother,” I exclaimed with my typical restraint. “It’s never done that before.” Gill from the caravan was busy taking photos. That made me feel good. I rolled the stupid kayak the right side up and dragged it out of the water where I flipped it over to empty it. I walked across the sodden grass to the porch once more and, hoping Jabba the Hutt was still asleep, grabbed the mop off the wall again. I mopped the boat out again and walked back to hang it on the porch, for the second time. I returned to the river bank and slid the stupid thing into the water - again. I slid it in all the way, as I was beginning to wonder if the tail end hadn’t been resting on a lumpy root to cause it to pivot as I climbed in. I stood in the water beside it and entered in the conventional fashion this time, gripping the rear and front of the cockpit opening to maintain my balance. Gill from the caravan continued taking photos throughout.
“Third time lucky,” I grimaced as I successfully lowered myself into the damp squishy seat. I thought the clapping from the river bank was an unnecessary accolade as I pushed off from the bank with as much grace and professionalism as I could muster for someone who had so lamentably demonstrated his aptitude in his chosen sport. Gill from the caravan accompanied me along the length of the campsite frontage taking photos as I pulled myself and my recalcitrant craft upriver.
“I’ll send you some copies!” she shouted as I disappeared into the gloom of an early morning drizzle. Thanks Gill, I look forward to seeing them.
Clifton lock was only a few hundred metres upstream and I arrived at its closed gates five minutes after leaving the campsite. As it was well before the lock keeper would come on duty, I opened the gates myself. Deciding to do it without getting in and out of the Karot after each operation, I climbed out and unravelled the blue rope wrapped around the front and walked the kayak into the open lock, where I tied it to a bollard before shutting the gates behind it. All that remained was to open the head sluices at the control board at the top of the lock. Once the levels had equalised, I pressed the button that said ‘open gates’ and watched as the great wooden doors swung apart. I walked the Karot to the mooring bank outside the lock and re-wrapped the rope around its nose and climbed into the cockpit.
The great cooling towers of Didcot power station loomed out of the mist ahead as I paddled down the lock cut. Passing under a very Victorian, arched steel railway bridge at Appleford, I looked out for markers along the long haul around the great sweeping curve of the river. The next was a procession of power cables crossing a few hundred metres ahead. I passed slowly under those, looking out for the road bridge at Culham, then the narrow lock itself. It was just gone nine o’clock, so the lock keeper was on duty when I arrived and I was let through without having to disembark. I had covered three miles in over an hour.
Culham, my well-researched itinerary told me, was the site of the Culham Science Centre where a particle accelerator has spent the last half century trying to created nuclear fusion safely. I don’t remember any headlines saying they had succeeded, so I’m guessing we can’t expect cheap, virtually free and totally environmentally-friendly energy any day now. Oliver would have plenty of time to get in with the other rocket scientists and invent cold fusion.
I encountered no-one. A grey sky and a fine drizzle did their best to dampen my spirits. They failed, as I had goals to achieve and sights to see. But not at Abingdon. I was keen to pass through this riverside town, cover the big left curve around Radley and get to Sandford-on-Thames, halfway up the straight stretch to Oxford, where I thought would be a good place for lunch. After Culham, I finally turned my back on the steaming stacks of Didcot.
The paddling was hard and relentless through Abingdon. The town, I discovered, was about as architecturally inspiring as a council estate on a wet weekend. It was devoid of merit or note. Dismal streets of tedious terraced houses fronting one of the world’s great rivers. What a waste of real estate. The rain drizzled over the scene in a melancholic haze. There should have been a cut in the bow of the river at Abingdon that cast it adrift on a forgotten backwater. It would have saved me time and tedium. I wanted to be past Abingdon and sitting in the welcoming pub enjoying lunch.
I was still very wet but warm, despite the rain. My lower body was cocooned in a steaming fug beneath my splash guard. My upper body was glowing with exertion. It was hard. It was unremitting. There was no joy in my Sisyphean labour. Like crawling up a giant sand dune and slipping backwards with each step only to repeat the upwards trudge with no end in sight.
Abingdon lock gave me a pause. A yellow board was on display on the downstream gates. It read: ‘CAUTION: STREAM INCREASING’. No kidding, I thought. You should see what it feels like from down here. I pulled into the opening gates as the lock keeper operated the controls above. It was five past ten.
“I’ve just put the warning board out,” he shouted. “Did you see it?”
“Yes,” I replied cautiously, not being sure what he was implying.
“We’ve opened the weir sluices to reduce the river level. It means the stream is increasing.”
“I noticed,” I replied conversationally.
“You shouldn’t be on the water,” he persisted. “I have to recommend that you get out of the water.”
“I’ll be OK,” I replied. “I’ve made it this far and I’ve handled the current OK.”
“I know, you look like a competent paddler, it’s just that I’m legally obliged to tell you.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it,” I replied as light-heartedly as I could. “But I need to get through Oxford today and camp at Eynsham tonight. I’m on a schedule.”
“OK, good luck. They’ll warn you again at Sandford.”
Terrific, I thought as I shouted ‘thank you’ and pulled out of the lock. Now I’ve got lock keepers to fight against all the way up river. I paddled up past the weir stream and hugged the bank all the way around the leftward curve of the river, passing under Nuneham railway bridge, until it straightened out at the grey pile of Nuneham House a mile and a half further on.
The stream against the bank was marginally less strong than in the centre, or at least it looked it from my position brushing the reeds and ducking under rain sodden branches. At Nuneham House, set high up behind a sloping lawn amidst a display of sheltering trees, I crossed over to the right bank. Midstream was a roiling, slithering conveyor belt of angry brown water carrying, I began to notice, various items of flotsam. A log bumped my hull in confirmation. It wasn’t any old bit of broken branch, but a length of milled log, pointed at one end. A log that was made for a purpose, the kind employed in buttressing a low earth wall or bank. Next, a rubber tyre swept past, then various plastic items: a water bottle, a lampshade, an orange boat fender. I began to wonder what was happening upstream. Perhaps a tornado had ripped through a caravan park? Or an avalanche had swept through a village carrying all with it? I expected to see the bodies of dead sailors soon.
However, a dead fish did, indeed, float past. Large, broad and broken. Mottled silver and black. Its tail was torn, its scales shredded and its back arched in a deathly contortion. I thought it a coincidence, but it was soon followed by another that bumped passed my hull and, a short time later, yet another, smaller one. I wasn’t sure what they were called and thought of the surly fisherman I had encountered yesterday and his unwillingness to educate me.
I ploughed on though the wet and the damp and the buffeting wind. At times it seemed as if I was getting nowhere. No movement, just a slowly changing river bank. Pull! Pull! Pull! Pull! I urged myself on. Head down and thoughts of nothing but reaching the pub at Sandford. My glasses speckled with droplets of water. My vision limited to the orange hull and the brown water in front. How did it come to this, my dream trip up the Thames!? Think of those days in summer. Those sun-drenched idylls on sparkling water with dancing insects and never a breeze. Of easy speed and happy encounters. When the paddles lapped poetically and brief pauses to observe a song bird in the reeds meant floating gently in the same place while making an identification.
Sandford. Sandford. I’ve got to get to Sandford. Three more power pylons to go. Under the next one striding across the fields and river banks lined with reeds. Two more to go. A copse of trees on the left heralded the next one. It took an age to crawl under those wires as the final cables and Sandford lock crept into view a short distance ahead. I limped into the lock with its welcoming lock keeper and not-so-welcoming yellow board.
“You shouldn’t be on the river,” he stated. “The stream is increasing. We put the warnings out this morning.”
“I know. I saw one at Abingdon,” I replied.
“No-one is out today,” he added. “The current is too strong.”
“I wondered where everyone was. I haven’t passed a soul all day.”
“We had thirty millimetres of rain yesterday and we’re expecting another sixty today. It’s not a good time to be out on the river, even in a power boat,” he continued. If he kept this up, I ran the risk of getting depressed, so I changed the subject.
“I hope the pub is open, I’ve been looking forward to lunch all day.”
“The Kings Arms. Yes, you can pull up over there by the car park,” he said, pointing to the pub car park on the river bank opposite the lock. I already knew where I would tie up as I had started a day trip from Sandford a couple of months ago when I had made my way upstream to Osney lock, with a side excursion up the Cherwell amongst the carefree punts.
I thanked the lock keeper and swung over to the right bank where I pulled up under an overhanging tree at the end of the car park. It was quarter past twelve. It had taken me over four and a half hours to go eight miles. I lifted myself onto the bank, tying the Karot to a branch of the nearby tree. Taking my day bag containing my money, Swiss Army knife and redundant sun glasses out of the cockpit, I splashed through the beer garden to the pub entrance, thankful finally to be out of the rain. I leant my paddle against the doorframe and stood in the stoop for a minute so the water would drip onto the mat before I entered. Heads turned, but not in a good way, as I walked across the room to the bar. I was an alarming apparition in fluorescent yellow lycra top, red buoyancy jacket, black shorts and sandals. Most of the customers were in suits, sitting around tables sipping non-alcoholic drinks, trying to act serious and businesslike.
“I hope you’re doing food, “ I said. “I need something hot and filling.”
“Here’s the menu. Help yourself,” the barman replied. “Would you like something to drink while you’re waiting?”
As tempting as this sounded, I didn’t want alcohol as I didn’t fancy collapsing into the Karot under a dripping tree tonight. So I settled for a large diet Coke and ordered soup and a hamburger. I replaced the upholstered chair at a spare table with a wooden one from over by the door, so that my wet clothes wouldn’t damage it. It was when I sat down and took my first sip of Coke that I realised how wet and cold I was. The thought of sitting at that table, shivering with cold and fatigue for the next forty minutes suddenly seemed foolhardy. A spare change of clothes was tucked up nice and warm in the waterproof hold of the Karot just waiting for this situation. I told the barman what I was going to do and walked back to the Karot to retrieve them. I smiled apologetically as I re-entered the pub and walked though to the toilets at the back. Once inside, I peeled off my top and took off my soaking shorts and stood there, towelling myself hurriedly before a customer walked in to see a naked man drying himself in front of the mirror. I carefully rolled up my wet clothes and placed them to one side before pulling on the sports shirt and shorts that I had so laboriously dried at the campsite the previous night. That felt better.
It was when I gathered up my wet clothes and walked out of the toilet, that I noticed the sign on the door. It said ‘Wenches’. That would explain why there were no urinals. I scurried self-consciously back to my table where I asked for a plastic shopping bag from a passing barmaid to put my wet clothes in.
The soup arrived, warm and aromatic, smelling of herbs and heartiness. Then the burger, plump and steaming and dripping with melting cheese. Strangely, I was not hungry after the soup, but ate as much of the burger as I could, feeling my body warming and my strength returning. I studied my map, read my itinerary notes, putting off the inevitable return to the wet cockpit.
It was only ten miles to Eynsham lock and the campsite on the island there. I would have successfully passed the last conurbation of my trip and entered the stretch of river I had been longing for. Nothing but open countryside and welcoming villages. Ten miles would have been nothing any other week. A couple of good hours paddling and I would be there. I wasn’t so sure today and accepted that I would have to put in a bit more hard work than normal to achieve my goal. But even at today’s speed, I should be at Eynsham by four.
But first to get through Oxford, where the river narrows to a channel between the concrete walls that lined the riverside streets of the town. Iffley lock, then Osney, then Godstow and finally Eynsham. Four locks to maintain my new schedule and set me up for the final day’s paddle to Lechlade.
I stepped out of the warm pub in my dry clothes and splashed across the courtyard to where the Karot was tied. Once I had loaded up and pulled on the splash guard, I dropped resignedly into the damp cockpit and fastened it around the rim. I pushed off from the bank, full of food and optimism, feeling the wet seat slowly soak through my dry shorts and the rain slowly dribble down my neck to my dry top. I paddled up through Sandford Pool past the island and made painstaking progress to a sharp left hand bend in the river before inching under the rusty steel arches of Kennington railway bridge. Boats sat disconsolately against sheltering banks in the rain. On my left, fields and flat land stretched off into a grey mist beyond. My parka hood was over my head and the pitter patter of rain against my ears accompanied the splashing of my paddles.
I passed under the Oxford ring road bridge, knowing that somewhere off to my left was Edmund’s university. I had driven him back to his digs on the Harcourt campus many times, taking the A34 trunk road up to Harcourt Hill and calling in to the local supermarket before unloading boy and provisions into his untidy little room at the end of the corridor.
A hundred metres further on lay Iffley lock with its grey stone cottage. A wooden footbridge on the left arched over a stream that lead to a portage ramp. A red board was out when I dragged myself up to the gates. Not unexpectedly, they were closed, but the lock keeper came out as if he was expecting me. Had Sandford lock phoned him? Any fears that he would prevent me going through for my own safety were dispelled when the gates slowly yawned open. Perhaps the idea was to trap me inside and not let me out the top end? He shouted down to me pointing out the red board.
“I know,” I acknowledged, “but I’ve come this far.”
“It will be worse upstream,” he continued. “You’ve got the Folly Bridge channel and the narrows at Friars Wharf where the canal comes in. Gets a bit hairy there when the river’s like this.”
“I’ll be OK,” I replied through gritted teeth.
“I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Your shouldn’t be out on this.”
“I’ve been doing this for years. I’ll be OK,” I insisted. “I have to go on. I’ve got places to go, people to meet.”
“Well, you wait and see. It’s not good up there. I’ve been talking to Osney and they’ve opened up the weir sluices,” he replied as the lock filled with water and I was raised up. The wind whipped his storm jacket as he walked the short distance to the control board and opened the head gates.
“I’ll tell you what, go as far as you can and if you get into any difficulty, come back here. You can spend the night on the island here and think about it.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it,” I readily agreed before he got even more insistent. “I’ll let you know.” I dragged myself out of the lock into the calmer waters above, shouting thank you and trying to look competent and strong as I powered my way upstream.
“See you soon,” he shouted after me hopefully. I already had my head down and was pulling hard to reach the right bank where I would negotiate the bend ahead and disappear from his view. It was half past two.
The sky was a bruised brown from horizon to horizon and a stiff wind roughened the surface of the water. On either side were fields and occasional trees. The Thames path was on the left but no walkers were out at this point. All tucked up warm and dry at home. I saw no-one as I passed under the broad arch of Donnington bridge and slogged on up through a series of bends to the entrance of the Cherwell beside a row of boathouses. Progress was agonizingly slow. Beyond were the dreaming spires of Academe but I wasn’t interested. They could dream all they liked, they weren’t helping to get me any closer to my destination. My world was confined to the snug cockpit of the Karot and the river immediately ahead. I was thinking of nothing, just the relentless ‘splurgh’, ‘splurgh’, ‘splurgh’, ‘splurgh’ as each paddle dragged through the water. I remembered my rhyme:
‘The hard way on
is better done,
than easy life
that’s never fought,
nor easy race
that’s always won.’
The slow forward motion was barely discernible unless I fixed my eyes on a spot on the bank and checked it a few minutes later to confirm that it was behind me. I stayed against the right bank after the Cherwell. A couple of students ambled past, hunched against the wind and rain. Soon they were gone, disappearing into the drizzle ahead. What were they doing out on a day like this, I wondered? It’s Friday, they should be in class, or studying.
As I approached the narrow channel through the city, the brown water began moving faster against me. I increased my rate and applied more power to each stroke, telling myself that I would only have to keep this up until I was past Osney, where the river would open up and take on a more gentle nature. Folly Bridge, that the lock keeper at Iffley had warned me about, soon came into view. It remained ahead of me for what seemed like hours as I slogged towards it. I knew this was the centre of the town, where the pubs spilled their occupants out onto the river bank and towpaths on sunny summer days. No such scene today. The buildings were brown and empty and glistening with rain. No happy shoppers lined the balustrades of that ancient bridge as it choked the channel beneath its grey stone arches. I pulled myself across to the left bank for the approach, past a retired tourist boat moored against a jetty and into the rushing torrent beneath the bridge.
Folly Bridge comprised three low arches, each about eight metres wide sitting solidly on a channel that was barley thirty metres across. From my position downstream, it looked like the narrowest point of the river so far. On the upstream side, the water was creating a bow wave at the top of the pedestals before erupting past on either side and pouring down through the constricted channels. It was impossible to pause, to slow my pace. Like a salmon leaping the rapids, I increased my speed and power in a frantic surge of energy, realising that I couldn’t not get through. I couldn’t let an old Oxford bridge defeat me. I couldn’t even guess how fast the stream was flowing, four, five, six miles an hour? I counted the strokes. Hard and fast. No pause. No let up. One two three four five six. I kept counting each stroke. I reached a hundred as I inched under the left hand arch. And on and on I thrashed!
‘To carry on
And on and on
Further on
And then some more
Always strong
Always sure’.
The stream flooded against me like a living thing, a seething brown serpent doing its best to swallow me. I must have looked insanely stupid under that arch, barely making any progress yet thrashing the surface of the water with flashing paddles like a mad thing.
I tried to think of stuff to spur me on. My wife. My children. What would they think? If they saw me now, would they laugh? Would they be proud of me or think I was a daft daddy? “Andrew, you be careful,” Carolyn would say. “Dad, wouldn’t it be better to get out and carry it around the bridge?” from Roddy. “Hee hee! You look well mental doing that!” Amelia would say. “Way to go, Dad,” from Ed. If pressed, Oliver would say something like, “Dad, what do you think you’re doing? You haven’t canoed in your life!” They don’t know me as well as children should know their father. Do they ever think well of me? “Of course they do, but they’ve got lives of their own,” Carolyn tells me when she sees my pain. Deep down, I believe her. It had been the same with my life. After I had left home and gone down to Auckland and university, I hardly had anything more to do with my parents. Never sent birthday cards and never received any. It was a strange life that was little understood by an adolescent Andrew trying to make his own way in the world. I didn’t even recognise my own parents impending divorce as I left for England. But I think of them now. Now that they’re not here. Now that I’ve got Oliver, Edmund, Roddy, Amelia to remind me.
I grunted each syllable of their names in time with each stroke of the paddle. Oli-ver! Ed-mund! Rod-dy! Mi-a!
“They love you,” Carolyn reassures me. I know. They didn’t chose the life they have, it was thrust upon them when the recession of the 1990s changed everything. News of divorce, bankruptcies and suicide was our daily fare. Marriages were breaking like toys after Christmas and several of my friends added to the statistics. I had been fighting the adverse economical tide for months, so when I joined the club, we would meet for drinks in a state of shock, dazed and wondering why the wives seemed to get going when the going got tough. I was always good with words, just rubbish at turning them into money when my family needed it most.
I finally broke out from under the arch where the pressure of the stream relented marginally and the boat stopped rocking so violently. I nevertheless had to keep up a strong pace for the confluence ahead.
The channel took a sharp right hand turn beyond Folly bridge and narrowed where it was squeezed in by the streets of the town. I inched on upstream hugging the wall, past where the Seacourt Stream and the Oxford canal entered, thrashing on past wet streets and tedious terraced houses. No-one was about to witness my efforts. It made no difference whether I hugged the concrete wall or battled on midstream, the surface was a roiling torrent on both sides of the river. I knew there would be no pause until I passed through Osney lock. But I had to get there first. I quickly looked at my watch. It was quarter past three. Forty five minutes to cover less than two miles. I couldn’t be bothered doing the maths, but knew that it wasn’t good. I was paddling for my life and nothing was going to stop me. My thin parka clung to my arms and my hat dripped water onto my face. My sprained wrist was hurting with every pull and my back ached for the first time.
I thought of the river ahead, the gentle beauty of the Cotswolds and I remembered the broad calm of the river at Teddington with clouds scudding across the sky and swans gliding out to greet me. I yearned for tonight’s campsite and urged myself on with the thought of a sweet cigar and a smoky Laphroaig sitting at the doorway of my tent congratulating myself on a goal achieved.
I passed under the footbridge at Friars Wharf a hundred metres upstream of Folly bridge and inched on towards an old steel girder bridge. The river flowed relentlessly past carrying a bobbing barrage of branches and bottles. It twisted left then right, then left again. I crept past the entrance of the Oxford Canal, paddling like fury for every inch gained. Fighting my way across the channel at each turn, I was barely in control of the kayak as the midstream current attempted to twist the prow around and sweep me away. It seemed like an age reaching the Osney railway bridge and it offered me no respite. Instead, the current increased as I got closer to the lock ahead. The weir stream off to the left was unleashing another torrent against me as I crawled towards the lock gates. The rain had eased but the low clouds nevertheless threatened more.
“I bet you didn’t expect to see me?” I shouted as I pulled to a stop below the gates, stretching my arms forward then backwards, rolling my sprained wrist and dragging it in the water to relieve the pain.
“I did. Iffley phoned,” the lock keeper shouted back. “What do you think you are doing out today?!”
I was a bit taken aback and in no mood to argue. “The best I can,” I replied. “Shame about the weather.”
“Are you mad?!,” he shouted down at me. “The stream is increasing. We’ve had a month’s worth of rain already in the first week of September,” he replied.
“Is that right?”
“Yes, that’s right,” he insisted. “Sir, you really shouldn’t be out today. I advise you to get out of the water.” He was nevertheless opening the gates.
“It’s not that bad is it?” I replied. I paddled through the gates with ease now that I was out of the current. It was an enjoyable experience. My position low down in the lock also gave me some respite from the wind.
“Have you seen what the river is doing?” he continued. “We’ve got red boards out. The weir sluices are open.” He stood there glaring down at me from under bushy grey eyebrows and yellow sou’wester as the brown water foamed around me. I felt small and vulnerable suddenly in the middle of his lock. No-one else was about on the river bank. The footpath was slick with rain. Everyone was in warm homes and offices, safe and unthreatened. Once I got to Eynsham, so would I be.
“I haven’t got much further to go today,” I said. “I just need to get to Eynsham. I can camp at Eynsham and then I’ll see how it goes from there.” When the water levels equalised, I held on to the lock wall to steady myself.
“Eynsham? Do you expect to get to Eynsham,” he said. “Sir, my advise is not to go any further. That’s my advice and, as lock keeper, I am obliged to tell you.”
“I know what it’s like,” I replied testily. “I’ve been paddling up the river for five days. I know what it’s like. I’m all right. I can do it.”
“Sir, have you seen what the river is doing up there?”
He was starting to annoy me. Staring to undermine my confidence. So far, I hadn’t had any doubts and I didn’t want any now.
“It can’t be worse than down there,” I said, indicating the stretch I had just battled up. “I must admit, it got pretty hairy through Folly Bridge though. But I’ll be OK. Don’t worry about me.”
“You may be an experienced paddler,” he admitted. “but I repeat, I strongly urge you to get out and look for yourself.”
Thinking that the only way to appease him was to do as he said, I agreed.
“Can I go through and look from up there?” I asked, hoping that at least he couldn’t stop me once I was through his lock.
“All right. But be careful. Come through and tie up on the right immediately outside the gate. Just pull up over there,” he instructed, pointing to a walkway just beyond the lock gates.
The upstream gates slowly swung open to reveal something I had never expected to see on the Thames. Normally, the gates swing slowly apart and the water on the upstream side is as still as the water in the lock and I glide gently out. But not now. The pressure that had been building up behind the closed gates was suddenly released and a surge of water rushed headlong towards me like a small tidal bore. I steadied myself against the wave until it bounced off the closed rear doors. But ahead, was the real shock. Through the open gates I could see the stretch of brown river flanked on the left by two vast weirs, one after the other off into the distance. The current frothed and rolled towards me down the centre of the river before suddenly being jerked sideways to cascade over the edge. It was like something out of an Indiana Jones movie just before a riverboat and all its occupants plunge screaming over the lip of a giant cataract into the frothing maelstrom below. I gulped, not even sure if I could get to where the lock keeper had told me to tie up. I gingerly hugged the right bank to avoid the pull of the current over the weir system. The channel looked only about ten meters wide here and the sideways pull was fierce. I inched along the walkway and grabbed the first bollard I came to. Ahead, the river curved around to the right so I was going to have to get out and walk the remainder of the distance along the walkway if I wanted to see any further.
“Now get out and take a look,” the lock keeper shouted across. “Tell me what you think.” I reluctantly dragged myself out of the cockpit and onto the walkway, trembling at the sudden release of tension. I was hoping to see a broad swathe of calm water where the current was lessened by the increasing breadth of the river. As I moved along that walkway, angrily kicking aside two sleeping mallards along the way, each step revealed the same narrow ribbon of seething brown water advancing towards me. Finally, I could see as far as was possible before the thing twisted off between narrow banks lined with dripping trees a quarter of a mile further upstream. More of the same. No broad gentle pool or lazily meandering river opening out to welcome me home. I turned to look questioningly to the lock keeper.
“How far is it like that?” I asked.
“It’s like that all the way up to Port Meadow,” he confirmed. “It funnels through that narrow channel for another mile and a half further on.”
“But past that? Surely this far upstream, there’s not much coming into the Thames?” I pleaded. “It can’t get any worse can it?” I was trying to think logically. I only had forty miles to go. The shorter the river, the fewer the tributaries feeding it.
He corrected my geography. “You’ve got two of the biggest. The Windrush and the Evenlode come in up there.”
I looked at my little Karot tied forlornly against the walkway and remembered all we had been through. I thought of Carolyn meeting me in the Cotswolds on Sunday. Organising friends and family for my triumphant arrival at the Riverside pub in Lechlade. My family. I thought of my lovely children waiting to greet me, watching the river downstream for the orange speck that was their colourful father. Greeting me with teenage awkwardness and reluctant pride, bewildered by the popularity of their heroic parent.
“Listen to me,” the lock keeper shouted. “There’s red boards out all the way to Lechlade. If you think you can do it, go ahead. I don’t want to be responsible. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Bother, I thought. As I stood there transfixed with indecision, I felt myself sagging within, like a balloon slowly deflating. I hadn’t realised how exhausted I was from the morning’s exertions. Almost five hours hard crawl over the ten miles from Clifton Hampden to Sandford-on-Thames, then a two hour slog up through Oxford against the strongest currents of the trip. Would I have the energy to tackle another six miles of this? Another three hours? I looked at the raging weirs opposite and imagined myself weakened from exhaustion with no strength left to prevent myself being pulled over. Or if I did manage to push on past those cataracts, would I slowly grind to a halt further upstream without the strength or the will to go further? I couldn’t sit still for days on end in the vain hope of the river subsiding. There had to be some time limit to my trip.
More importantly, I didn’t want to give the lock keeper the satisfaction of reading in the local paper about my broken body being washed up downstream in a tangle of splintered plastic. I didn’t want my epitaph to read, ‘He should have listened’. My arms drop to my side and my shoulders sagged. I felt my breath fall to a whimper and disappointment flooded through me like a wave of acid.
I suddenly realised that this was how it was going to end and I knew I wasn’t going to be happy about it. I had planned a gentle paddle up a benign river while raising money for my favourite charity. A to B. Teddington to Lechlade. Nothing more demanding than that. What had happened was an unexpectedly challenging journey that had turned into a dual between nature and man. In a fight, nature always won. It had today.
I turned to the lock keeper. “OK, you win,” I said but knew that I was really talking to a river that had betrayed me.
I trudged back to the Karot, slumped on the wet metal walkway and, eyes stinging with regret, phoned my wife.
After five days, ninety five miles, forty eight bridges and thirty two locks, I was stopped by the English weather. An unseasonable September storm sweeping up the west coast of England had turned my idyllic meander up a gentle Thames into an increasingly exhausting battle against a raging monster. It was the end of my Thames odyssey. The conclusion of my relationship with a river that I thought was my friend. Suddenly, all my memories had no celebrated ending to glorify them. Memories of talking to the ducks, chatting to pretty blondes, cursing rude fishermen and shouting at the tempestuous heavens. Of listening to winged monsters flying overhead in the night. Of sleeping with honking geese and hurrying trains. Of dining with my family and friends. Of locks. Oh the innumerable locks and countless bridges! Slowly crawling up to the next bridge, slowly creeping under it, slowly pulling out the other side. Of lock keepers and assistant lock keepers. Some friendly, some formal. Charming and chatty, gruff and gloomy in turn. Memories of paddling up to those dank grey gates. The long wait. The opening inwards and paddling through. The idle banter while it fills and the cheery goodbye as I emerge from the other end.
So my expedition came to a grinding halt on the damp bank of an unremarkable lock in a unmemorable back street of a city whose only relevance to my life up until now was being the temporary home of my second son.
Fifteen minutes later, I was sitting in a nearby pub, shivering with cold and exhaustion, watching unemployed men playing pool and waiting for Carolyn and her brother Andy to collect me.
© Andrew Dunning 2008
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