h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Talking of scenery and missing out - when I did the Bwlch climb the other weekend I missed out on what must have been a stunning scene as it was dark when I did it Roll on the longer days.
Planning my first century ride (100 miles) in the days before Christmas - that will take in Bwlch and the Rhigos climb just before it - probably 22nd Dec - weather permitting...
I don't really doubt I can do it now (barring mechanical failure) but it will still be a big milestone crossed...

Oh, Deke, this sounds great! I was afraid you wouldn't be able to get out there at all and that would be sad because I am sure it is beautiful as well as physically rewarding! And your progress is heartening

Things are starting to get chilly here where I live but it is also beautiful and fun to be out in.
We don't get snow right here though. And certainly no ice to break on the surface of waters!

On: Putting in Time on the Water

I got a phone call on the Sunday night of the second week in December and arranged with my son an outing to the Wey for the following morning. The Thames is still labouring under red and amber warnings of fast currents and the weather was cold with frost still hanging around at midday. We started off fairly early from New Haw Lock paddling upstream. As he's a lot faster than me we had an arrangement that we start off together and after the first mile he ploughs on ahead while I try to keep him in sight for as long as I can. Further on, when he runs into Pyrford Lock he turns around and comes back to pick me up to return to New Haw. From my point of view this is quite a good arrangement as it means that I have a pacer to work against, which makes me work harder than I might otherwise have done.

The main stretch from New Haw is in a dead straight line as all good canals should be, and with good eyesight you can in fact see the first bridge at the end of a mile-and-a-bit stretch. This time I was able to keep him in sight until he turned the bend after the bridge as I could see his paddles flashing in the distance as he kicked up spray which was glinting in sunlight. Now it's become a test of effort to see how far up the course I can get before I meet him coming back. He went right out to Pyrford lock and I met him coming back with only a quarter mile to go. The return was much the same effort and this was undoubtedly the best session I've had so far in completing about four miles.

At this juncture in my schedule I’m trying to utilise whatever time I can get on the water as I‘ve got a couple of months loss of training to make up. So, when Wednesday dawned, with early temperatures still below freezing and the frost for three days having turned my lawn to concrete, I didn’t have the time to turn down the otherwise bright shiny day. I had planned to do a longer run this day and that would help to consolidate Monday’s effort. A full five-mile trip to Pyrford was what I thought would be suitable, so having kitted myself out with the Cagoule and gloves, the first time I’ve had to use them in earnest, and a thermal layer under the Cag, I set off from New Haw again after lunch.

I plugged on against the flow, but even then a rime of ice was beginning to show across the water ahead of me. It was really cold, but the Cag and gloves kept the frost at bay. Inside the Cag I was sweating profusely and was getting wetter inside than out. At about two-thirds distance I came across a Heron standing at the waterside. I came across it again on the way back, it may well have been frozen into the water. I reached Pyrford after almost an hour where this a small marina and noted that the still water in the marina pan had a thin sheet of ice across its surface. I dug myself out of the boat and turned it around for the return trip to simulate a ‘portage’ but took a fifteen minute break walking up and down the bank to get the circulation in my legs going again.

The way back was with the current and everything seemed to straighten itself out for the return journey. At first I felt as if I was zipping along. The paddle was entering the water cleanly without ‘slapping’ the water as it does when I’m pushing against the flow, and I was getting a fair amount of body rotation, keeping the paddle in the water for a useful stroke. But, I had misjudged the time all this was going to take, and by this time the Sun had disappeared and it was getting quite dark. By the time I slid past the frozen-in Heron and hit the home-stretch to New Haw the only light on the water was from the roadway lights in the distance. Overall, the journey had taken just a few minutes more than two hours. I managed to get out of the boat with numb legs and arms, pulled the boat out of the water, loaded it on the car, and let out a whoop as I punched the air for my little success. I was also really looking forward to getting home to a hot bath and tea. Then disaster...

I usually leave the car’s ignition key locked in the car and take a spare door-lock key with me in a waterproof pouch. As I fumbled in the pouch for the key My frozen fingers didn’t quite get the grip on it I needed. I dropped the key and it bounced off my foot to somewhere under the car. To cut a long story short, some little while later after scrabbling about in the wet leaves under the car, I had come to the point of seriously considering breaking a window to get to the main keys inside the car when another car pulled into the car park and I caught a glint of metal near one of the back wheels... Lucky!

After two days lay-off I was still stiff and sore in the shoulders from the previous session, which I suppose shows too much use of the arm muscles and not enough waist and torso action. But the weather had turned, the frost had gone and a bearable temperature prevailed, it was time to go again. I set off in beautiful sunny conditions warm enough to just employ a thermal and a tee shirt without the Cagoule Despite some heavy overnight rain the river conditions report showed that the whole of the Wey way navigable so I set off again from New Haw Lock heading upstream and once again the paddles were slapping withy gusto on entering the water, although as I warmed up, digging in at a more upright angle seemed to help mitigate that.

My intentions for this trip was to go about half-way up to Pyrford so as to complete a mileage of about four miles this time and not overdo it. At first the going was quite good although it soon became obvious that I was paddling against a heavy flow. Instead I had had enough by the end of the mile straight and decided not to push it any further as I still had to get back. The fatigue and stiffness from the efforts of the other two sessions of the week were now showing in the poor form of paddling. Although I was being helped by the current any semblance of form or technique was lost and I staggered the boat back to the start, only too glad to finish for the day.

When I got back home I rechecked the river conditions only to find that while I was out on the water and in mid-paddle the warnings had been upgraded to ‘Dangerous’.

All sounds good to me

I've had a stinking cold for the last week so have only really been able to keep my training ticking over. Irritating as I'm planning on my first century ride on Saturday. This is starting to loom close and I'm still not better
Ha well, sometime over the holiday period it *will* happen.

Hi Clare and Orcus. Firstly, apologies for not replying to your posts earlier. RL seems to be getting in the way a bit.

Good luck Orcus, with the weather and your event this week (today). If the weather is anything like that which we are experiencing here I don't think it'll be much fun, and you probably won't be seeing much of the scenery what with the low-flying cloud. Nothing much but battleship grey skies and heavy rain here, especially at night and for the last two out of three days. Personally I'm beginning to think that I'd rather have the cold conditions, at least that was dry!

But take it easy if the cold is still lingering on. You probably won't be able to do the run justice if you're feeling under-par.

Hi Clare. Progress is going in fits and starts at the moment, It's been good to get in a few steady sessions for a couple of weeks but at the moment I could do with some of your weather instead to keep it going, chilly or not. The canal and the river are off limits again right at the moment but I went down to look at the river yesterday. The swans on the river can't make much headway against the current and the waters through the weirs at Molesey (just a mile or so upstream from me) are pretty impressive. So are the ones at the canal's weirs. They are all fully open and the water is feeding downstream to add to the Thames. I've never seen conditions as torrid as these before.

In bed with what I increasingly suspect is flu. Certainly an extended and very nasty cold at the least. to be honest though. With the flooding and rain around here it's unlikely it would have happened anyway. Amen to dry weather.

On: Another Lull in the Fighting.

A bit of a lull in the generally poor weather conditions, in particular the precipitation, that has centred large, and taken over my thoughts during waking hours, has meant that I've been on a bit of a roll with paddling this last couple of weeks. From the beginning of December up to mid-month I've managed eight outings on the Wey, averaging one every two days, and they have in general felt pretty good, almost as if I'm getting somewhere. I would probably have done more if it hadn't been for the aches, pains and protesting joints.

The outings have mostly been of the two-mile variety, initially to get back to feeling 'comfortable' in a boat after the recent extended lay-offs, but they have also included a couple of extended (for me that is) trips doubling up that mileage. I've also made something of a transition from a standard paddle to a 'wing paddle' which is now becoming familiar to use, but I have to admit, doesn’t seem to have improved my speed over the water any.

But everything good comes to an end, and the sessions have stalled again. Once more the heavy rainfall across the British Isles has resulted in the Thames and the Wey navigation being put off-limits to boating in general. I took a walk down to the Thames at Kingston to see how things were was progressing after the latest warning off. In fact it’s about the worst I’ve seen with a constant flow washing its way down towards Teddington lock. The red warnings have been in force for more almost a week now and the conditions don’t show any sign of abating. Even the local swans were having difficulty making any headway upstream.

My last two outings on the Wey were at the early part of last week, accompanied by Mrs D who now walks our new dog along the towpath. They set off ahead of me while I get the boat and myself into the water. I tend to catch them up at about half way, at which point the dog spies me coming up from behind and tries to get into the boat with me, only being saved from himself by Mrs D. He’s only four months old and hasn’t learned what deep water is yet.

On the Monday I set off on the usual, short two mile trip, but for some indefinable reason it just didn’t feel right. The paddling was weak, even weaker than usual and the stability was wobbly. I got to the end of the run and instead of the usual multipoint turn I got out and lugged the boat out to carry it a few paces upstream to simulate a ‘portage’. Once again that was rather more haphazard than I cared for but it was a slight improvement on the previous week’s efforts.

On the way back the river takes me under a footbridge, a railway bridge and a sepulchral edifice that carries the M25. This is at a point where the Basingstoke canal joins the Wey Navigation and there is a confluence of the water that causes a slight drifting of the boat as you plough through it. It can give you an unusual sideways motion, which can take you unawares as the front end of the boat hits the current when the water is moving faster than usual. I have no idea how deep the water is at this point and having no wish to find out I tend to take this particular patch with a little more care that usual.

I had just passed under the railway bridge and was just negotiating the confluence when I heard somewhere in the distance behind me, an old but familiar noise that sounded like, of all things, a steam engine. At first it didn’t register with me that it could possibly be a steam train as British rail consigned all of theirs to the scrapheap years ago. It got louder and louder until reaching a crescendo, it passed at full chat behind me, creating a few interesting wobbles in my forward passage. Right at that particular moment I could not have turned around to look behind me without falling out of the boat, so I seem to have missed what must have been a very rare event on British Rail. Mrs D and the dog, on the other hand got the full view of a locomotive under full steam drawing a half a dozen carriages across the bridge. It’s very surprising the things you come across while paddling a kayak.

Two days later I went out for another longer run, back again to Pyrford again. Once again things didn’t feel particularly right, and I was already beginning to sag on the outbound half of the journey. But it was brightened up by a reappearance of my old friend the Heron, in almost exactly the same spot as last time, and a few minutes later the emergence of a Kingfisher from the bank-side undergrowth. This is only the second time I’ve ever seen a Kingfisher and the previous time was only for a split-second flash of emerald green. This time he bobbed in and out of the undergrowth as we went along, only keeping ahead of me for about fifty yards before disappearing.

At Pyrford I took a longer than usual break and had a chat with a group of ramblers who were taking a break at the pub by the lock while working their way down the river towards Weybridge . I also had a look at the water gushing through the lock’s culvert which was really moving despite the warnings being lifted at the time. At least the return journey was with the flow. On return and packing away the boat, it started to rain again and has continued on and off for almost a week since, with the inevitable result that the rivers are closed and I’m pawing at the ground to keep going what progress that I’ve made. It’s said that a sign of oncoming age is when you can remember in perfect detail events of fifty years ago while being unable to recall what you had for yesterday’s dinner. I feel that’s happening to me as far as kayaking is concerned, as I don’t seem to be able to retain the lessons learned only a few days before if I’m forced into yet another lay-off.

Meanwhile Black clouds form outside the window and the forecast is for yet more rain. The water authorities say they have enough water stashed away to last two years. Oh for another hosepipe ban.

On: Calculating Risks

I've fallen at the first self-imposed hurdle in that I'm not going to make my target of carrying out a ten-mile long paddle by the end of the December. The best I've been able to manage is a couple of five mile efforts, which weren't done with any real ease or grace at all... but they were done.

Christmas came and went and Santa dropped in a new toy to play with. It's a Garmin GPS watch that tells me where I've been and how long it took me to get there. It's programming is fairly straightforward and records miles, time, pace and calories burned. That last one should be interesting. . The only thing is that it shows the outing as a run or a bike ride, and not as a paddle. But I know what it means. Hopefully I’m going to be able to use it to see if the good performances I’m putting in are real or imagined.

At the start of the week I had another look at the Wey which had just had the benefit of two solid days of rain. The parts of the River Wey that run parallel to the Wey Navigation have overflowed their banks and the adjacent fields are flooded. The Wey Navigation was high and running quite fast but not showing too much turbulence so when I got another call from my son to go out we decided to say sod it to the conditions and warnings and at least give it a try.

So, on Boxing Day morning we put the boats in at New Haw and the water seemed quite flat, just moving a bit faster than usual but with a surge across the width of the channel towards the weir near the lock. It certainly didn’t seem any worse than the last time we had been out on it. It was still a hard workout though, pushing our way against the flow. Eventually my son forged on ahead and I lost him to view, but not quite as quickly as the last time. I ventured on a little further past my usual two-mile stopping place but this time I still had to give him best and turned to go back before I met him on his return trip. He completed the full five miles up to Pyrford and back in under an hour, but didn’t catch me up until we were almost back at the start.

Once again it was a whole lot easier paddling back with the flow and wind behind me. The Garmin showed the awful details and full erratic story when they were downloaded to their site for analysis. I was pleased to find that my calculations on distance and average speed were about right, but it confirmed that the return trip (with the flow) was a little faster and a little quicker overall than I had thought it would be. It also highlighted that the my speed at any particular point varied enormously between two and a half and six miles per hour.

We arranged another outing towards the end of the week, but by this time the weather had deteriorated even further. The rain had swollen the Thames to the point that half of the clubhouses’ car park was underwater and the floating pontoon that’s usually has to be stepped ‘down to’ get on, had to be stepped ‘up to’ instead. Meanwhile on the Wey the water level in some places was almost to the brim of the embankment and a gusting wind was blowing along the length of the two-mile stretch. The water was also rippling along at an apparently fast rate, though that was probably due more to the wind kicking up the surface. After a bit of serious consideration we elected to go out anyway as I knew that I was going to need some practice in these sort of conditions. Ever since ‘finding’ the Wey at this point last summer I’ve always regarded it as a friendly and welcoming place, but with the conditions from the last couple of weeks and today, it’s come to feel to be a rather hostile place instead.

Once again I laboured against the tide and a wind gusting from zero to twenty miles-an-hour or more, coming at me not only from straight ahead but also sideways through the trees that line the bank, giving a turbulence that was rocking the boat as it caught me. For the outward leg it was of course an awful performance and I was getting nowhere fast. The side gusts felt as if they were going to have me over at any moment and I had to stop paddling a number of times to regain equilibrium, but at least that gave me an opportunity to practice support strokes a couple of times.

None of this was helped by the kayaks and canoes from the local clubs that usually use the Thames and had been forced by the downright dangerous conditions out there to use the Wey instead that Saturday morning. By the time I got on the water it was getting crowded and obviously the conditions on the Wey were of no real consequence to them. The majority were not even wearing BA’s. At first I had to pull over to get out of the way as groups of paddlers came at me four abreast. To them the Wey was just a relatively placid place and they were doing reps in groups, at full chat with the wind and flow while I just bobbed around in their wake.

Later, on the way back, even with the gusts of wind giving me the occasional surge forward, I was passed by two old boys who each looked about ninety years old, in very narrow, pointy boats who at least had the humour to say hello. Both of them were as thin as laths without a spare ounce between them, but at least they were friendly. I tried to keep up with them for a while but it soon became apparent that they were working on a different power/weight ratio to me and gradually got well ahead. Just before the finish of what was a thoroughly unpleasant paddle I was passed by another pair which included a lady of uncertain age in another Laance, showing just what a Laance can do in the right hands.

At least taking my chances on the water despite the warning boards being up has proved useful, as the conditions on the Wey are not anything like those on the Thames. I simply wouldn’t take the same risks there. But if I’m sensible about it, it does open up the possibility of using the Wey Navigation even when the warnings are posted, although the traffic that migrates in from the Thames makes it all a bit crowded.

So, despite having a reasonably good start to the month I haven’t made my target of a ten-mile trip by the end of December. If I had done so my target for January would have been a trip of twenty miles, which doesn‘t seem likely now. Although I still labour in the hope that if I can get a period of useable weather and with the wind in the right direction, I might still make a breakthrough.

Entries to the DW open on 1 January 2013

Hi Deke, good hear you're still getting out despite the poor weather, even if you haven't made the progress you want to.
So are you going to go for it?

I know what you mean about the weather - I was hit with horrific weather on the fateful first century I did on Dec 30th. You can read the full horror of it here F62071?thread=8299200&latest=1

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Hi Deke, isn't modern technology marvellous?

Just doing this week's editing, can I ask about this sentence:

"but this time I still had to give him best and turned to go back before I met him on his return trip"

Is there a word missing, perhaps?

many thanks!

Bea

Hi Bea

>>but this time I still had to give him best and turned to go back before I met him on his return trip"<<

Nope, there's nothing missing. Although I might have said/punctuated it a bit better.
I assume the rather old fashioned expression >give him best<, meaning to 'accept defeat' is the culprit here. Please just reword it. Perhaps :

'this time I had to accept defeat, and turned to go back before meeting up with him'.

Sorry.
Deke

No apology needed, that's a new turn of phrase I've learned

I can reword it now I know what it means

Thank's Bea

I think it comes from to 'best' someone.

I very often find myself using phrases around h2 that I've used for years, but no-one else has ever heard of.

Deke

Hi Orcus.
I read your journal on making the 100 miles. Well done, that’s quite some achievement, especially in those conditions. I sympathise on the loss of your phone. It’s one of those ‘Oh No’ moments. I know the feeling well. It’s almost a Stephen King plot.

Am I going for it? That’s the 64,000 dollar question.

The short answer is yes. I’d already committed myself to doing it, but there was always the proviso that it would have to be with a reasonable degree of competence and safety. I don’t mind taking risks but I value my little pink body too much to risk it too much, so I‘m not averse to postponing it a year if I have to.

A year ago, in my ignorance, I didn’t think I’d take anything like as long to pick up the necessary techniques and I thought that I had more than enough time to get ‘up to speed’. That was probably the case, but I’ve made some major errors that have put everything behind to the point where now I’m just playing catch-up.

I ‘need’ more time on the water and I’ve determined that the clincher will have to be whether I can do a 30 mile trip inside the cut off time of 10 hours. There’s just three months left to get to that happy state, but at the moment I‘m doing five in an hour and three quarters, which is much too slow. I think it’s still do-able, but the weather’s going to have to play ball for a change.

Onwards and Upwards.

Deke

On: Picking up the Pace

The new year found the conditions on the local rivers still the same. The rivers are still in flood and the warning boards up all along their lengths. Despite this, on New Years Day my son and I ventured forth again, supposedly risking life and limb up our now familiar route on the Wey from New Haw to Pyrford. In fact the increased flow was the most difficult part, although it provided a hard work-out on the first half of the journey. He, of course, arrived long before me but this time he waited rather than come back, forcing me to complete the full five mile course. Our local club was out on the water as well and I came across them at the eatery adjacent to the lock. They were only half way through a much longer paddle and taking a break. My son and I returned back to New Haw more or less together, with him sprinting ahead in intervals, then resting to let me catch up.

This session was interrupted by the appearance of four houseboats from some sort of houseboat convention that was also ignoring the warnings to not move on the water. We had to pull over to let the four of them go past in convoy. But at least on the return everything seemed to be clicking into place for a change and sometimes I was even cutting a neat little bow-wave, even while going with the flow.

At last after a couple more days with no appreciable rain, the warnings along the Wey had been lifted and conditions deemed 'safe'. This, after a continuous stretch of nearly two weeks. Even so the red warning boards remained in place along the complete length of the Thames. I celebrated this return to normality with a quick burst along the two-mile course, just to keep my hand in, while Mrs D walked the dog along the towpath. After my exertions earlier in the week I didn't really feel very much like it at all. The water wasn't running very fast and my performance felt to be sorely lacking. Everything was erratic, including my steering which seemed to be heading all over the place and at the same time I couldn't keep any sort of a rhythm with the paddle going. In the first upstream dash, just at the narrowest point under the M25 fly-over, I was caught in the heavy wash of two dredger barges making their way downstream and was forced over close to the concrete bank that forms the channel under the fly-over. Despite all this the Garmin showed that I’d done my best time ever over the two miles, without any break except at the turn-around.

Buoyed up by this result I was ready by the end of the week to try to improve my time over the five -mile distance to Pyrford. Up to that point my best time was about forty-eight minutes in each direction, plus a break in the middle, and I was anxious to improve that and try to make some sort of increase in my average speed.

Arriving at the New Haw car-park I found a group of paddlers unloading Canadian canoes and a couple of the smaller white-water type kayaks. I now have a fairly well practiced routine and I had my boat off the car and on the bank ready to go in fairly short order. But obviously these guys and two ladies looked quite useful and not wanting to make an exhibition of myself as they sailed past me I faffed around for a while to let them get ready and go on ahead, in the hope that I could keep out of their way and keep them in sight using them as pacers. After another ten minutes though they didn’t seem to have got any nearer the water and were still unloading gear, so I decided to go anyway.

Although I started off steadily to warm up I was soon working hard again against the flow to stay ahead of the group as long as I could. Past half way and I could hear indeterminate noises behind, but they hadn’t passed me by the time I got to Pyrford. On getting out I could see behind me for the first time and they were nowhere in sight. Eventually I was ready for the return and they still hadn’t appeared. Ready that is, as far as I was able to be from the effort and having made myself feel quite sick from downing a half bottle of Lucozade energy drink. The return still felt better and faster, although I was still having to take rests and belch a lot. It wasn’t until I got about half a mile back that I came across the canoe group who seemed to be struggling a bit against the flow. We nodded in passing and I smirked when I was well past them all. I have no idea when they started or if they’d taken a break or even how quick they really were, but I think I had them on the day. Something of a first for me.

Back at the M25 I met up with a veritable armada of about ten Canadian canoes manned by young boys and shepherded by older, more experienced paddlers in single Canadians. The kids were all over the place, three and four abreast, heading for the banks or the reeds, or under the moored houseboats, but having a whale of a time. I pulled into a side bank to avoid a capsize, which could have been either them or me, or both.

All in all, at the end the whole thing felt as if it had gone well, except perhaps when I put my hand in a pile of dogshit on levering myself out of the boat. But how much better I couldn't say. When I set off I had pressed the reset on the Garmin instead of the start button and hadn’t recorded a thing.

I’ll just have to go and do it all over again.

So when you put that last posting up I got waylaid looking up canadian canoes.
Hours later I fell asleep, never getting back to hootoo to comment on your excellent narrative.
Very inspirational, especially your final exit from your kayak
You are pretty funny, Deke. Thank you

And you really do have a way with words. The paragraph about all the kids swarming all over the canal was... well, I really could see it

>When I set off I had pressed the reset on the Garmin instead of the start button and hadn’t recorded a thing. <

Oh been there, done that You and your body know you've done it though, no? That's what's important, not bragging rights on Garmin connect.

>I’ll just have to go and do it all over again.<

Yeah, and faster - that's training for you

Hi Clare

Thanks again for your encouragement.

I'm thinking I'm going to change over to a Canadian and join the kids. I can't do much worse than at the moment.

Deke