Day Two
A day of firsts and family
It didn’t. I woke at five o’clock to the sound of rain. Unzipping the front flap of my tent, I peered out into a drizzly grey gloom. I fell backwards and dozed until eight o’clock when I was woken by the sound of silence. No pitter-patter of tiny droplets. I quickly ate a muesli bar and banana before deflating the Lilo, rolling everything up and placing them all into their respective waterproof bags. When that was done, I used the shower and made myself a cup of tea in the little kitchen across the lawn from the tent. I relaxed on a chair outside the kitchen door overlooking the lawn and the weir stream below while sipping my tea. At the lock keeper’s advice, I then walked through the gate and around the side of the lock house to open the downstream gates.
“It’s a foolproof system,” he had assured me the previous night. “You can’t open the downstream gates while the upstream gates are open. It won’t let you.”
He was reassuringly right. I pressed the button on the control panel that said ‘Open Gates’ and the great grey doors swung open with a reluctant groan, creaking and complaining like an old man. Left open, I could paddle straight in when I had loaded up. I returned to the camping area and folded up the wet tent before carrying everything down the metal ramp to the boat. The splash deck that I had left secured to prevent rain getting into the kayak hadn’t done its job and was collapsed inwards by a heavy puddle of rain water. This had spilled over the seat and onto the floor. I started baling it out using one of the two plastic tumblers I had brought with me. It worked OK, but in my haste to scoop out the water, I released the tumbler as well as the water and saw both disappear into the river. I finished the task using the spare tumbler. At this rate, I mused, I would be drinking my Laphroaig out of the bottle. The seat was made of sponge and would be damp all day.
In the grey light of a still, damp morning that felt much earlier than it was, I paddled back around the side of the lock, relaxed and safe in my uncomplaining little Karot. To my dismay, the lock gates had been shut. Bother, I thought, the lock keeper is on duty early and must have shut them. So I had to unfasten the splash guard, heave myself onto the pier and climb the slick steps to the lock side. The lock keeper was in his little ‘shed-cum-office’ when I approached and came out to see who I was and what I wanted. It was a different lock keeper from the previous day. Who are all these assistant lock keepers, I wondered? Where do they all come from? It seems like an unnecessary expense to employ so many for what is really quite a simple and undemanding job.
“Hi, I’m Andrew, I camped here last night,” I said by way of introduction. “Sorry, but I opened the gates so I could get through. Martin told me to help myself if I wanted to go through before nine o’clock.”
I stood there in my yellow nylon parka, red plastic splash guard dangling below my knees and bright cloth bandana I had bought on a recent holiday to Lanzarote. He looked at me as if I had crawled out of the lock to prey on his children.
“You look as if you have come a long way,” he observed. “How come you’re going upstream? Most people do it the other way.”
I was running out of retorts, but thought it worth informing him about the charitable status of my expedition.
“Exactly,” I replied. “I figured I would raise more if I did it differently. This way gets people talking.”
“Well good for you. I’ll open the gates then,” he replied. I thanked him and gave him the £5 for the campsite fee before returning to the boat, by which time the doors had swung open and I could pass through.
Today was a day of firsts. I saw my first kingfisher as it streaked low along the river ahead of me and smelt my first cows in fields I couldn’t see. I saw my first castle. I had passed under Albert Bridge (surprisingly, built as recently as 1967 to carry the A3021 across to the little village of Datchet on the other side) and rounded a bend. Datchet was on my right and the Crown Estates land of Windsor Castle was on my left.
According to my well-researched itinerary, somewhere along here lay the foundations of the first and original Thames crossing at Windsor. It was a farcical story of two counties at war. Buckinghamshire and Berkshire were at each other’s throats in the 18th and 19th centuries over who should pay for the bridge that connected their two counties. Bucks on my right argued that the original bridge was built for the convenience of Queen Ann and was therefore a royal responsibility assumed by Berkshire on my left. Berks, on the other hand, refused to pay for the whole bridge as the local worthies claimed it also benefited Datchet on the Bucks side. It was a silly squabble. At one stage, Bucks built half a bridge out to midstream while Berks built their half out to reach it. That way, they reasoned, each county could be sure they were only paying for repairs to their own side. The trouble is, the two halves didn’t quite meet up and a small gap remained. To compound the stupidity, Berks has build their half with iron railings while Bucks had favoured wood. So a more hybrid bridge was hard to imagine. Luckily the whole thing only lasted forty years before it was demolished and the Victoria bridge and the Albert bridge were built across different stretches of the river upstream and downstream respectively.
Once past the Albert Bridge, I observed small notice boards at intervals along the left bank confirming it was Crown Estates land with no mooring permitted. Then slowly, between the regularly-spaced trees, above incongruous fields of maize, the grey silhouette of Windsor Castle came into view. I knew it was surrounded by the bustling shops and streets of Windsor, but from my perspective low on the water, it was impressive, imposing and appropriately isolated. Home Farm and the Home Park was all that lay between me and the castle. A grey Crown Estates Land Rover, with a royal crest on its side, moved quietly along the bank, perhaps checking for illegal night mooring. I took a photo of the castle because, from my position on the river, it was a view you don’t see every day. It required as much elaborate care as the self-timer photograph under the M3 bridge yesterday, with the added challenge of a light drizzle. Once I had positioned myself for the best angle, I had to quickly take the shot before I drifted too far downstream and lost the composition. It took me three attempt to get the angle I wanted, slowly losing ground each time. Putting the camera back into its waterproof pouch also took time as the pouch had three strip seals and a button-down Velcro flap to contend with. By the time the whole exercise was completed, I had lost fifteen minutes and had a few hundred metres of water.
The river was smooth and glassy as I continued up to Windsor. I saw my first mandarin ducks on the bank, still within sight of the castle. How appropriate that these colourful ‘royal’ birds should be here, I thought. Now all I had to look out for were ‘queen’ bees, ‘king’ penguins and ‘emperor’ butterflies.
I passed under Victoria Bridge and Black Pott’s Railway Bridge. I now felt I was on the real Thames, not the muddy brown tidal monstrosity that Londoners thought exclusively theirs, but the Thames for the rest of us. The familiar and much-loved river that runs past Cookham, Benson and Clifton. Places most Londoners had never heard of or only knew as weekend destinations. The Thames of fields and reeds, tree-lined towpaths and flashing, dashing, honking, stinging wildlife. Where country pubs were both in the country and on the riverside. The sparkling Thames that meandered through the Cotswolds where I longed to see otters. After Eynsham, which I would reach on my penultimate day, the river was a local event. It twisted through fields and villages where fêtes and fairs occupied summer weekends. Where farmers on tractors and fishermen under green umbrellas quietly farmed and fished while nevertheless living rich and rewarding lives without the dubious allure of London and its sheep-in-formaldehyde, congestion charge, pigeon poop on the pavement culture.
The drizzle had passed by the time I reached Romney Lock but my thin nylon parka still clung sodden to my arms. I was the only one entering from downstream, but surprisingly, a pleasure craft and a narrow boat emerged through the opening gates. I exchanged a few pleasantries with both as I plunged eagerly through. Everyone on the river was wearing wet weather gear because it had been drizzling all morning. The weather was the main topic of these exchanges.
As I glided through the gates, I pulled up against the lock wall and gripped the slimy green chains that hung down like in some medieval dungeon.
“I’ll hang on to these shall I?” I said.
“Suit yourself,” the replied nonchalantly as he pressed the button to close the gates behind me.
“Do you mean I don’t have to?” I asked disingenuously. “I thought I had to with duck sluices.”
“You know about duck sluices do you?” he smiled. “It’s not compulsory. Depends on how well you can control your boat.”
“OK then, I’ll do what I did at Bell Weir lock.” I rinsed my green-stained glove in the cool water and pushed myself away from the wall to take up a position midstream where I waited for the eruption of water that I knew would turn a normally routine lock event into a brief white water experience.
I shouted “thanks for that” as I popped out of the lock upstream and cruised up the long, narrow cut on still water under dripping trees. At the end, Windsor came into view. The trees that had closed in on me in the cut gave way to the commercial buildings of the royal town. I continued between hotels and office buildings. On the left bank, the Windsor side, two tourists under umbrellas stood feeding a flock of swans. A cluster of white feathers on a brown carpet. I passed by the posh Christopher Wren Hotel on my left and the expensive House on the Bridge Restaurant on the Eton side. Then I edged close by a pontoon in front of a canoe club before paddling past the great ‘Windsor Wheel’, the local Ferris wheel that attempted to rival the London Eye. It was unmoving and bereft of tourists, yet still looked commanding against the slate grey sky.
Karot was equipped with a pull string that raised and lowered the skeg underwater at the back. This is a thin retractable keel, like on a surf board, that adds stability and direction to the craft in a wind or strong current but makes turning more of an effort. For the first time on my journey, I had to use it as I left Windsor behind me and confronted my first sharp bend on the river. I yanked the skeg up and pulled hard on my left paddle for several strokes to make the hard right-hand turn opposite Windsor Marina. I was immediately much more manoeuvrable and could negotiate the turn with ease. Ahead was a sharp left hand turn around Windsor race course, so I left the skeg retracted. Once I had negotiated the corner and saw the straight stretch of water ahead, I released the cord from the grip and heard the clunk as the plastic blade dropped reassuringly down once more.
Loudspeaker announcements and the tantalising smells of fried onions and steaming hot dogs testified to a local event taking place at Windsor race course. It reminded me that I hadn’t actually had a proper meal since Sunday night. The rain let up and I tried to convince myself that this was evidence of a transitional summer weather system and it would be sunny and warm again for the rest of my journey.
I was in familiar territory, I felt good, and my wife and friends were waiting for me at Cookham. I had the alliterative Boveney, Bray and Boulter’s locks to negotiate before then. Then Cookham lock and lunch at the Ferry pub. I had promised to meet everyone there at twelve thirty. It was eleven fifteen as I approached a deserted Boveney Lock and saw that it had a roller portage on the left of the lock gates. That made it only the fourth lock since my journey began to feature these helpful devices. Teddington had one, as did Molesey and Sunbury, but as far as I was aware, and from asking some of the other assistant lock keepers, none of the remaining six locks I had passed through had roller portages. Some claimed to have portages, but it turned out that they were no more than steep flights of steps up to lock height and a long carry to the other end. Others had only slopes, with no steel rollers, which was, I suppose the next best thing. Many, I discovered, didn’t advertise their presence at all, so in the absence of a simple sign I had no way of knowing until I asked the lock keeper. I decided to use the rollers at Boveney as I knew that there were few on the remaining length of river and I wanted a genuine ‘canoeing experience’. I disembarked onto the low ledge beside it and unfurled the blue rope wrapped around the nose of the Karot. Even fully-laden, it wasn’t as difficult as I had imagined and the four metres of orange plastic containing all my necessities dragged up the steep slope quite easily. At the top, I see-sawed it so that it was pointing down the shorter, upstream slope and gently nudged it towards the water. I was in the Karot and on my way again before you could say ‘open the gates please’.
Apart from a few wiggles, the river slowly unfurled in a straight line northwards all the way up to Cookham, where I would loop through the lock and arrive at the pub. Four miles ahead, I had Bray Lock to negotiate. Then another four miles to Cookham. Based on my reckoning of paddling at four miles an hour, that would have taken me two hours on a normal summer’s day. This wasn’t turning out to be a normal summer’s day as I was experiencing a bit more of a current and a stronger wind than I had expected. So I allowed for at least three hours to get to Cookham. I fumbled for my phone and suggested to Carolyn that I might be a bit late. That would make ETA at half past two. I rounded the loop of the river where I knew from my map that the Olympian rowing lake at Dorney lay off to my right, then continued on up past the fabulous houses of the wealthy. Many were owned by retired TV and film personalities as well as, I imagined, rich Arabs and corporate fat-cats. They were splendid and varied in their architectural styles. Lawns like green carpet gently rolled down to the river where steps dropped down to a pleasure craft - either a small tender, a polished slipper launch or a larger cruiser. Some houses were Tudor in style, large rambling edifices of turrets and balconies, while others were in modern red brick sprawled across swathes of green like an oversized Lego Land. Some of these pockets of prime real estate were occupied by relatively insignificant little lodges or bungalows, but all nevertheless shared an air of relaxed gentility, like an old man in a faded cashmere cardigan relaxing on a deck chair on the lawn, smoking a pipe and reading the Sunday papers. Most of these houses were on the left bank, the Berkshire side as I called it, although it wasn’t that simple. It was also Berkshire on the right bank until past Maidenhead Bridge and Cliveden where the river once more separated Berks from Bucks.
The day of firsts continued. It was the first time I passed under my last motorway. I had paddled past the gothic Oakley Court hotel, scene of many a Hammer House of Horror film produced at the adjacent Bray Studios, then slipped along the quiet banks of Monkey Island with its grand white hotel and flocks of Canada geese. I heard, then saw, the M4 ahead. I really felt I was in my own back yard now as I passed through its shadow and out the other side to Bray Lock. It was twenty past twelve and there was no portage as far as I could see, but steps and a low wall where canoeists could disembarked and carry their craft. I hadn’t bothered to ask lock keepers to phone ahead today. There seemed no point and I had broken the chain at Boveney where there was no-one around to talk to anyway. If I encountered a recalcitrant lock keeper who insist I portage, then I would have to argue my case, lock by lock. But I was hoping I didn’t have to.
I was pushing quite hard now. With a schedule to keep and the pressure of reaching Cookham for lunch, I was never more conscious of the time. The sun came out intermittently but great white clouds rolled across the sky and repeatedly blocked it out. That was the signal for the wind to pick up but I wasn’t sure if it was a help or a hindrance. By rights, it should have driven me northwards because what wind blows southerly this time of year? But it was swirling in every direction, seemingly influenced more by the course of the river than the weather system that drove it. As a result, I was being constantly pushed to the right by gusting squalls. Progress was only achieved by an unequal stronger pull on the right paddle to keep on course.
It was a long hard haul up to Brunel’s great bridge at Maidenhead. According to my well-researched itinerary, this marvel of brick engineering was built in 1839. That was a busy year for Brunel, I was to learn as my journey progressed, but nothing crowned his achievements that year more than this giant-arched red brick Victorian triumph. I let out a high-pitched ‘whoop’ of excitement as I passed under the echoing arch and laughed as the ducks scattered ahead of me. They say a duck’s quack doesn’t echo, but an echo sure makes the ducks scat!
I was coming up to another familiar landmark. A block of thirties apartments on the Bucks side below Maidenhead bridge where I had attended lavishly-catered garden parties hosted by Ken and Liam, old friends of Carolyn’s. Ken a retired airline steward and Liam, master chef extraordinaire. I wanted to call them up and urge them out onto the balcony to wave as I passed. They had supported me in my thespian aspirations in the past by enthusiastically attending a couple of plays I had appeared in locally. I appreciated that. They had also greeted me, a month earlier on one of my practice paddles as I passed their favourite watering hole opposite, the Thames Riviera bar. ‘Andrew, halloooo!’ I had heard as I swept by downstream. Barely in time, I had turned and recognised them sitting by the riverside with their Pimms in hand. ‘Hallo! See you when I come back!’ I wasn’t sure then that they had even heard me, but now the effort of stopping and maintaining my position plus the urgency of my schedule decided me against phoning them. So the best I could do was silently wish them well as I struggled past.
Majestic Maidenhead bridge spanned the river a short way upstream of Brunel’s triumph. This graceful carriageway was built in white-stone in 1777, surprisingly when you would expect the British Empire to be distracted by more important issues such as losing its greatest colony in the American Revolutionary War.
A little further on, an acquaintance and a regular at my local pub in Bourne End, the Garibaldi, was waiting to greet me at another Thames-side hotel. He crossed the road and, leaning on the iron rail, shouted a greeting and waved. I was surprised to see him and was amazed at the coincidence. Then it occurred to me that Carolyn might have told him about my journey and he had timed it deliberately.
“Francis, hi! What are you doing here?” I shouted back. “Why aren’t you at the Gari?”
“I live here,” he replied, indicating the leafy suburbia behind him known by estate agents as ‘the river area’. “How’s it going?”
“Fine. I feel good. Could do with less rain and wind, but it’s been good.”
“See you for a pint when you get back to earth,” he laughed as I resumed paddling. A short way ahead, I was greeted by another friend, a lovely blonde lady of Carolyn and my acquaintance, walking her dog along the tree-lined avenue that accompanied the river to Boulter’s Lock.
“Hello handsome,” she called. “Is this it? Is this the trip then?”
“Hello gorgeous. Fancy meeting you here. Yes, I’m on my way. Day two. Thanks for the sponsorship,” I said. Carolyn had told me that Wendy had donated money on my charity website, so I was pleased I had remembered it and thanked her. “I mustn’t stop, I’ve got people to meet, places to go. I’ve got to be at the Ferry at two thirty.”
“Bye then,” she waved, “good luck.”
“Nice to bump into you. Must do it again soon,” I replied and paddled the remaining short distance to the lock where I was in for another surprise.
Boutler’s Lock was shut when I got there. On one of the busiest stretches of river and dominated by the large Edwardian hotel of the same name, it was surely one of the smallest locks on the river. Certainly the smallest one I had paddled through so far. But the gates obstinately refused to open. A couple of elderly ladies were looking down at me from the palisade of the small footbridge that crossed onto the lock island.
“Hello,” I shouted, “Is the lock keeper about? Can you see him?” Of all the places to waste time, with my only social schedule to keep to, this was the least favourable. One of the ladies disappeared for a few minutes and came back.
“The lock keeper’s down the other end and knows you are here,” she shouted down at me.
“Thank you,” I shouted back. “I’m paddling up the Thames,” I added as they continued leaning on the bridge gazing down at me expectantly.
“Oh, that’s nice,” one of them responded. “How far have you gone?”
“Well, from London actually. I’m heading for Lechlade in the Cotswolds. Only four more days to go.”
“Oh.” Conversation seemed a bit strained, so I changed the subject. “Can you see any boats coming into the lock?” I enquired. She disappeared again, longer this time, then came back with the news that the lock keeper was waiting ten minutes in case something came along upstream. That annoyed me. After all, I had paid my river licence and had as much right to a helpful service as any other craft on the Thames. This was the scenario I was dreading, where I was being treated like a second class citizen simply because I was only an annoying little canoe. (I was convinced lock keepers didn’t know the difference between kayaks and canoes.) I bet the lock keeper would have opened the gates immediately if I was an over-priced gin palace with a retired CEO on board to suck up to.
I resigned myself to an irritating wait when suddenly, another figure appeared on the lock bridge. Great, maybe something will happen now. It took me a second or two to recognise my son, Oliver. Tall, dark and suitably scruffy, he waved down at me with a happy grin and the expensive camera I had bought him for his 21st birthday last year.
“Hi Dad,” he beamed.
“Hi Sport. How did you get here?” Just then, my brother-in-law, Andy, appeared at the balustrades.
“I picked him up,” he shouted.
“Hi Andy. Fantastic! Good to see you. Thanks. Brilliant.” I was touched. As Oliver proceeded to take photos, it made me think that I must paddle up the Thames more often. He turned the camera every angle, clicking away like a pro. Bending down or moving sideways to get a better angle. I knew I was going to get some good pictures out of this, as well as rare ones of me in the boat, mid-stream that I couldn’t have taken myself. I had seen Oliver’s holiday photographs and he had a creative eye. Not being content with people with their heads chopped off, he created arty shots of people and landscapes. Pictures of observational detail with unusual elements juxtaposed, such as a shot of the Empire State Building framed beneath a ‘No Walking’ sign. Or a view of a gondola in Venice cleverly distorted through an empty beer glass. He had learnt all that from me, of course.
The lock doors finally swung slowly open and a lone pleasure craft glided nonchalantly out. Bother, I thought, all this waiting just for you. Shouting ‘see you the other end’, I hurried into the lock, Oliver snapping away all the while.
The lock keeper, or assistant lock keeper, as I am sure she was because no female lock keeper was mentioned on my well-researched itinerary, charmingly apologised for the delay. “There was a boat upstream I was waiting for, sorry,” she explained.
“That’s OK,” I conceded. “Is there portage here?” I asked so as disguise my irritation. After all, I still had to get out the gates at the top.
“Yes, around there.”
“Where?”
“Around the side. Up by the weir.” I know Boulter’s Lock island well. It contains a park with an ice cream van and an aviary housing exotic finches and budgerigars, with twisting pathways where small statues lay hidden among the shrubbery. My recollection didn’t stretch to a portage ramp. Besides, the island was quite wide.
“Is it a roller portage or just a ramp?”
“It’s a slope you can drag your canoe up and only a short distance across to the upstream side.” It sounded like a poor excuse for a portage to me and not one I would have wished to attempt. I still couldn’t picture where on the island this portage place was and didn’t care.
“But there’s no sign. How would I know that? You should have a sign here so we can see it.”
“You just have to ask and we’ll tell you,” she replied.
“But I had to wait ten minutes before I saw you,” I said. “If there was a sign, I would know to go straight around.”
I tried to sound good-natured and jolly but probably failed. As I passed through the lock, Oliver accompanied me trotting along the path taking more photos. Coming out the top of the lock, he directed me to position myself behind a flock of swans that had gathered there optimistically waiting for morsels from moored boats. Photo taken, Oliver and Andy walked back to the car and we raced each other up the two mile stretch to Cookham bridge. There was a strong probability that they would beat me.
For all its familiarity and for all my urgency to achieve my goal, I was conscious that I was on one of the most beautiful stretches of the river. Not so much in the dank gloom of today’s indifferent weather with the thick brown waters streaming against me, but in the summer, when I had easily glided upstream along fresh, bottle-green waters under the sheltering canopy of the trees, threading through the little islands and smelling the fresh hay from the fields on Widbrook Common.
It was a glorious river here, with Cliveden towering imposingly on the hill above. I didn’t need my well-researched itinerary to tell me that Cliveden in general, and the secluded cottage on the river bank below in particular, had been the site of many a scandal. It is here that the Profumo affair between the minister of state and the prostitute, Christine Keeler, was fostered during nights of debauchery in the ‘60s. Also, there were, and still are, the Astors. The Astor family have long since sold Cliveden to the National Trust, which now runs this magnificent palace as a hotel. I think Lord and Lady Astor now rent and live in one of the wings. I met a Lord Astor once, about twenty years ago when I was on the committee of the Stanley Spencer Gallery in Cookham when I was helping with their leaflet design and printing. I’m not sure which Lord or Viscount he was, but that’s how he was introduced to me. He was probably in his mid to late-thirties then, slim, very polite and approachable, I remember, and happy to get involved with Cookham’s heritage.
I finally rounded the left turn into Cookham lock, praying there would be no delays. I pictured my wife and her parents staring anxiously down the lock cut opposite the pub, waiting for me to appear. I did, eventually, get through the lock without any impedance and make my way up the gloomy lock cut before bursting out into the wide basin in front of the pub.
I spotted Carolyn first, bouncing up and down and squealing with joy. Then they were all there against the railing waiting for me. I put on a turn of speed that I hoped would impress as I swung over to the pub and pulled up against the steps below.
After one night in reasonable comfort on a lock island, I was hardly Odysseus, but I nevertheless received a hero’s welcome. A quick handshake and congratulations from Senan as he leaned down to help me stand. Then hugs and sighs from lovely Carolyn, whose aching pride I felt in every fibre of her body as we walked up the steps to the gathered group. The in-laws were there, full of calm admiration; a hug and a kiss from Joan once I had taken my wet life vest off and an understated ‘well done’ from quiet Geoff. A tacit wave of acknowledgement from Andy across the table who had, indeed, beaten me to the pub in the car. Oliver, bless him, even took time out from his photography to give me a hug. ‘Dad,’ he grunted in shy acknowledgement. I really must do this Thames thing more often.
“Poor you,” Carolyn cooed, “you look exhausted.”
“I’m not,” I said indignantly. “I feel fine.” I didn’t want to look exhausted, I wanted to look fit and fresh. Rippling with untapped vitality and ready for anything. Obviously my wind-ravaged face belied my feeling of well-being.
A pizza arrived. “I ordered it for you. Eat it, you need the energy,” she said, urging food into my hand. I didn’t want to eat too much as I knew it would get uncomfortable sitting in the kayak for the next four hours.
“Go on,” Carolyn insisted, “you need a hot meal to keep you going.” I felt fine, but loved the attention.
I ate most of the pizza, but Senan left, as is his wont, to attend an undisclosed commitment elsewhere. It was good to have his cheerful company for a short while.
Everyone was studying the map to identify the length of river I had covered so far. I was on to the second map by now, but the first map, Ordnance Survey Landranger map number 176 for West London included the river from Teddington, south through Shepperton, up through Chertsey, under the M3, then the M25 and on up to Windsor, where map 175 takes over.
“You went all that way?!” exclaimed Oliver. “That’s well far!” That made me feel good. It was satisfying to know an old dad could still impress a cynical son. That casual praise alone would have made the whole trip worthwhile.
Time was marching on and so should I. Joan and Geoff and Oliver watched with fascination as I kitted up. First my life vest, zipped and buckled tight, then my splash guard pulled up like a skirt. “Nice fashion statement, Dad,” Oliver said. Then my fingerless mittens were pulled on. These were nylon, waterproof ‘Crew-Savers’ that I wore to prevented blisters. I had modified them slightly by cutting the fingers even shorter to allow for an easier grip on the paddled. Making sure I had lifted the skirt of the splash guard high around my waist so I wouldn’t be sitting on it when I lowered myself onto the seat, I carefully dropped into the cockpit and stretched it around the rim. Oliver was back in ‘David Bailey’ mode along the towpath as I waved goodbye to wife and family. I swung out under Cookham bridge and cut a line to the opposite side where I hugged the right bank until I was out of sight around the bend and on my way to Bourne End.
The weather continued changeable with white clouds covering the scant blue and raising a breeze with annoying regularity. The current on the long four mile stretch through Bourne End and past Cookham Reach on up to Marlow was quietly trying to hold me back as a gentle reminder that it had something to say about my progress. I passed the gravel pits at Spade Oak where I spend many a quiet morning on the lakeside with my binoculars and telescope. Apart from the usual water fowl, I have spotted black tern, bar-headed geese and a ruddy shelduck here on my bird-watching vigils in the past. Although more common, I was no less impressed by the exotic Egyptian geese that lined the bank at the end of Coldmoorholme Lane. I had first seen these handsome birds actually in Egypt. It was many years, decades, ago on my first trip to that scorched country as I sailed the Nile from Luxor to Aswan in a hired felucca with a group of fellow travellers. I remember, too, that a large Nile monitor lizard was the highlight of that gentle journey. No such distraction here. Just fishing poles thrust out from the river to avoid and youngsters in sculls passing up and down under the watchful eye of a row master in a small motorised dinghy. “I’ll race you,” I shouted to one of the fit young girls as she drew level. She smiled nervously and raced on ahead. Her parents had probably warned her about talking to strange men in kayaks. I chatted to one of the lads, however, because I knew these were pupils from the Sir William Borlase school in Marlow.
“Are you Borlasians?” I shouted when a scull next drew level.
“Yeah,” came the reply. “We’ve got a club at Marlow.”
“I know. My son used to row with the Borlase club a couple of years ago. What year are you?”
“Year six,” he answered. “Just done my GCSEs.”
“Oh, my two have just finished their AS levels. What’s that then, year seven? Maybe you know them, they’re the twins, Roddy and Amelia?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “No, I don’t. That’s a year above me.”
“Well, good luck, only four years to go. See you in the London Olympics,” I called back as he powered off upstream.
By rights, it should have taken me no more than an hour to reach Marlow lock, but by the time I had passed under the Marlow bypass, fighting the strengthening wind, and turned the corner towards sheltered little Marlow lock, it was five o’clock. That was nearly an hour and a half. A shameful time for a distance I had regularly covered in forty minutes early that summer. Less, coming back downstream. I was the only one into the lock this time. A couple of pleasure craft came cruising out with scarcely any effort in the rushing current. I gave them a wave and pulled my way into the lock. According to my well-researched itinerary, the lock keeper here should be someone called Duncan.
“Hi, are you the lock keeper?” I shouted.
“That’s me,” he shouted back.
“You’ll be Duncan then,” I ventured.
“Last time I looked. How did you know,” he asked suspiciously.
“I’ve got your name down here. You’re the first lock keeper I’ve met who is the actual lock keeper, not an assistant.”
“There’s lots of assistants about this time of year,” he said. “Not so many as a while back in the holidays though,” he continued.
I explained my journey and passed up my charity card for his inspection. Mindful of the time, he asked: “You got anywhere to stay tonight?” To be honest, that question had occurred to me on the stretch up to Marlow. I had intended to free camp on an island up at Wargrave that I had discovered on a previous recce. But that was eleven miles and four more locks upstream and I didn’t have four hours of daylight left.
“No, not really. I was heading for a free camp up near Wargrave, but I don’t think I’ll make it now.” It was a hard admission to swallow and the first occasion where things wouldn’t be going as planned. It meant that the remainder of my schedule would be put out by four hours. The knock-on effect would be that I would have to completely review my camping arrangements unless I could make up the time the next day. I was thankful that I had incorporated enough information into my well-researched itinerary, including all the available campsites and lock islands where I could pitch my tent. For now, however, I knew that the only option between here and Wargrave, was a campsite an impossible half a mile from the river at Henley. I had long since discounted that one as being far too impractical. But I had forgotten something.
“Try Hurley,” Duncan offered. “There’s good camping at Hurley.”
“Hurley? I said. “I forgot Hurley.” I was nevertheless thinking about the large, commercial caravan site on the Hurley bank of this tiny Berkshire village. It hadn’t featured as an option as I would have had to join the Camping and Caravanning Club and book in advance, but they might let me in if I pleaded and paid them vast sums of money.
“The lock there has all the facilities and it’s very secure,” Duncan continued as he opened the upstream lock gates.
“On the lock island?” I said disbelievingly. “There’s camping on the lock island?” The realisation slowly dawned on me. Yes, of course. I remember now. “The lock island. Great. I’ll head for there. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” he said and waved me off as I headed upstream with a new-found vigour. Hurley was only two and a half miles and two locks away. I could make it by six o’clock. Lock keepers knock off at six now that the summer holiday season has ended and I didn’t particularly want the inconvenience of operating locks myself. I slid past the Compleat Angler Hotel just below Marlow Bridge where Carolyn and I had our wedding reception back in 2004. That event was the last time all my family had been together under one roof. Both brothers and my sister had made the trip from New Zealand and stayed at our house for the duration before heading off to various unvisited parts of Europe and America on their way back to Auckland and Wellington.
I skimmed under Marlow’s stone and cable bridge built by William Tierny Clark, the same engineer who designed the suspension bridge over the Danube in Budapest. My children had told me this little-known and quite interesting fact gleaned from a local history lesson at school. I covered the two miles to Temple Lock in thirty-five minutes, pulling hard all the way and keeping close to the bank to avoid the sculls from the nearby Marlow Rowing Club. Happily, Duncan had taken it upon himself to phone ahead to Temple Lock to let them know I was coming up, so the lock doors received me with an open welcome. I quickly explained that I wanted to get to Hurley for the night.
‘You’ll have to be quick, he’ll be knocking off now,” I was told. I looked at my watch. It was five forty-five. Fifteen minutes to go.
“What? It’s a quarter to six,” I said. “I thought you guys finished at six? There’s fifteen minutes to go. Can you call him up for me please? I need to camp there tonight.” He contacted Hurley while he operated the sluices and opened the head gates, chatting all the while and occasionally laughing at some private joke.
“He says you’ll have to go like lightning, he’s got some paperwork he needs to catch up on.” So barely waiting to say thanks and goodbye, I exploded out of the lock like a cork from a Champagne bottle. It was only a short half mile to Hurley and I sprinted all the way. I built up a steady rhythm with each stroke pulling me closer to camp and comfort. I ploughed past the little riverside marina development and slid to a halt outside the lock gates beyond.
“Whew! That was hard work,” I gasped as the lock keeper came out to man the gates. “Thanks for waiting, I’d like to camp here tonight.”
“Come in,” he said, meaning, come in to the lock. I entered slowly giving my arms a chance to rest.
“That’ll be £12 for the night and £10 deposit for the keys,” he told me at the lock side.
“What keys?” I asked.
“You’ll need these keys to get over the bridge to the lock island if you want to go to the pub tonight,” he explained. “You’ll get the deposit back in the morning when I come back on duty at nine.” I immediately spotted the flaw in this arrangement.
“Actually, I’d quite like to leave before nine, if I can. How can I get the deposit back?” Actually, I didn’t give a damn about £10 deposit and would have willingly left it for the prospect of a decent rest tonight and an early start tomorrow to make up my lost time. “Couldn’t I just paddle to the pub and not worry about the bridge?” The pub was my reward for a hard day’s paddling and I longed for a pint of cider.
“I don’t think you’ll want to be doing that late at night,” he warned gravely. “Tell you what, forget the deposit, but you must remember to leave the keys out for me before you go in the morning. We go through a lot of keys here when people don’t return them.”
“I wouldn’t do that. I promise,” I said, “where can I leave them?”
“OK then. Over the door on the hut there. Just put it on the eave. Can you see?” He indicated a narrow shelf above the door frame wide enough to conceal the keys.
“Sure, no problem. Thanks. I won’t forget.” He showed me a map of the complex of islands that adjoined Hurley Lock and where to moor and find the locked bridge. The campsite was on the second island out from the Hurley bank, the next one beyond the lock island. The map also included the village itself, with its two pubs prominently marked. I paddled out of the lock gate and pulled a hard right around the upstream point of the island then coasted down the short channel to pull up just before a small weir deliberately blocked by a barge. I moored and unloaded. A feeling of relief came over me for the second time. An unaccountable sense of comfort and security like arriving home after a long flight back from a holiday. Knowing that my hours of paddling were rewarded in some small way by my success in finding a safe haven where I could sleep off my fatigue and recharge myself for tomorrow’s effort.
I paced the island, looking for the best place to set up my tent. The lawn area designated for overnight camping pitched and rolled, offering few options for a level base for my pop-up tent. I finally settled on a relatively flat area against the trees at the edge of the campsite. I carried my provisions from the mooring to the tent in two trips, being careful to arrange the splash guard on the Karot in such a way as to prevent water puddling on its surface overnight and filling the boat. With everything arranged in the narrow space between the inflated lilo and the tent walls, I awkwardly pulled off my damp clothes and put on my dry ‘civvies’. This comprised a pair of cotton trousers and a striped polo shirt. I kept on the sandals that I had been wearing in the boat all day as I had deliberately not packed a pair of shoes. I wasn’t expecting to socialise much on this journey, but Carolyn had invited two of my other children, who couldn’t be present at the Ferry earlier in the day, to meet me in Hurley tonight.
Walking up the single street that is Hurley a short time later, I was practically run down by a small blue car driving towards the river. My daughter, Amelia, was at the wheel and I fleetingly recognised Carolyn and Edmund, my number two boy, as terrified passengers. Sweet Amelia had only passed her driving test a few weeks earlier and was keen to show off her nascent driving skills. By the time they had parked and joined me in the pub, I was finishing my first pint. I got a happy embrace from my little poppet and a manly hug from my tall second son, Edmund, the only other of my four children who had a driving licence.
The second night
Sitting at the mouth of my tent that night, smoking my cigar and drinking my whisky, I mused contentedly on the events of the day. I had left the pub and my wife and children half an hour earlier and walked down Hurley High Street to the narrow path beside a high wall that connected it with the river bank. Then, using my torch, I carefully climbed the steps of the footbridge that took me over to the lock island and my tent. Around the other side of the small wood, the yellow light outside the toilet block cast a pale glow across the lawn. From where I was sitting, I could just make out the gates to the footbridge opposite and the low bank where the Karot was moored. The wind stirred the branches above me and the reassuring call of a tawny owl sounded from somewhere in the woods nearby. I cupped my hands and blew a reply. A few seconds later, the owl called again, closer. I loved playing this game and often spent warm evenings sitting on my patio at home replying to owls with my imitation hoots. It must have been disappointing for them to follow the call of a prospective mate, eventually landing nearby, only to find a whisky drinking idiot sitting there in a haze of cigar smoke blowing through cupped hands.
I sat there in the mouth of my tent in a haze of cigar smoke, relaxed and happy, soaking up the sounds of nature, the murmur of the weir and the smell of the damp grass. I was once more well fed and ready for bed. It was a good time to reflect on my progress and plan the next day. So far, I had travelled forty miles up the Thames, passed through fifteen locks, met my children in circumstances that I hoped would set a good example and give them a new perspective of their father - and survived. Surprisingly, no aching limbs or bruised buttocks. No desire to call it a day, not regrets. Just a quiet pride that I had taken the first few steps on what was to be a personal adventure. I knew others had undoubtedly done this before me, although most did it the other way, but I didn’t know them, so they didn’t count. The important thing was that no-one I knew had paddled the Thames the wrong way. I hadn’t even read books about it. So it felt like a pioneering first. It was for me, and that’s all that mattered.
That, and my children. And Carolyn. It was wonderful seeing them today. I missed Roddy though. He wasn’t at the Ferry at lunchtime with Oliver nor at the pub in Hurley. He was either working an evening shift at the supermarket or working on his seduction techniques at his girlfriend’s place. According to his siblings, no-one was ever quite sure with Roddy these days. The hormones had struck, so he was either abstruse or absent. Still, I looked forward to seeing him when I get to Lechlade. Perhaps.
Together with Carolyn, Amelia and Ed, we had spent a pleasant evening over a bar meal with me telling them about my adventures over the last two days. It was when I got to the story about the duck sluice at Bell Weir lock that the children started drifting off to sleep over their medium-done hamburgers. Which just goes to prove, you can take the teenager out to the tavern, but you can’t take the torpor out of the teenager.
That’s easy for you to say, I thought as I poured another whisky, wondering why the plastic bottle was unaccountably low. I would have to wrestle a bear and stop bullets for them before they took any interest. And even then, it would have to be on a reality TV show to give me any credibility. Except that didn’t work either because I had done that, without the bear wrestling obviously, when I appeared on a TV look-alike show several years back. Us ‘look-alikes’ were so manipulated we all put on very stilted performances. It didn’t impress the children and it didn’t impress me either. I ‘appeared’ on another ‘live’ show shortly after that, also involving look-alikes, in which the fake-tanned, gay presenter kept asking the audience to ‘keep your votes coming in’. Us look-alikes spent a day in the studio recording a show that was to be aired some time in the future. The exhortations to ‘vote now by calling this number’ after we had all done our piece to camera rang a bit false by the end of the day when our orange host said to camera, with a perfectly straight (sic) face that the votes had been counted ‘and the winner is..... Eddie Murphy!’ That wasn’t me. I was ‘Jack Nicholson’. I found it amazing that anyone could 'phone in to vote' when the show hadn't yet been broadcast. I left with a cynical view of so-called reality TV.
This was followed by several years of intensive amateur dramatic performances where I appeared in four plays a year at various venues around the county. That was fun and proved my brain hadn’t totally atrophied in my old age, but the jury is out on what my children thought. Of all my children, only Roddy saw one of my performances, once. But at least I have shown them that it can be done, which is the best thing. One day, I bet, one of them will tread the boards.
I reviewed my camping arrangements. Tonight I should have been on that little island I had previously discovered at Wargrave. I reasoned that if I got an early enough start in the morning, maybe I could make up the lost distance and still camp tomorrow night at Benson as planned? But that was thirty-three miles upstream and I had averaged only twenty miles a day so far. What’s more, I had taken an unexpected eight and a half hours of paddling each day to achieve that. However, my thinking was that if I got the ten miles to Wargrave out of the way early enough, I could then consider the day started from there and finish the remaining twenty miles to the campsite at Benson. That was the theory. It turned out to be far from the practice.
I passed another revivifying night on my squeaky Lilo dreaming of blue skies and no wind. It was early September for goodness sake. It should be sunny and fair.
© Andrew Dunning 2008
No comments:
Post a Comment