The Paddlers, old friends & acquaintences

For the record, we followed the progress of Cat & Gilly paddling for Loughborough University, who have trained along side us at the Meadows Gym & NKC all winter.
They finished in a time of 19:55:24. This put them overall 11th, 1st in the Ladies class & 1st in the Universities class.
Along the way we met many friends & acquaintences amongst both supporters & paddlers. Brian Greenaway, now in his 60th year won the 100+ class with his partner Andy Worth. They were 12th overall & 5th in the Veteran class in a time of 20:36:26 . He started doing DW when he was 15 & has completed it at least once every decade since then.
Richard Golder was doing the 4 day event, finishing 4th in the Senior Men in a time of 16:32:19. Although we passed their second day finishing place, the timing meant that sadly, we saw nothing of him along the way.

John Day, Paul Ralph & Ian White were among many others watching Brian Greenaway & Andy Worth start.
Brian Greenham was to be found in the middle of the night as a marshall at Dreadnought Reach. He has completed DW 8 times, has won it 5 times & has the lowest average time of 17.9 hours. Ian White, another member of the exclusive 1000 Mile Club (8 times or more DWs) also with a low average time and a win to his name, was to be found all over the place as the Chief Umpire.

Other ex-DW paddlers were in evidence as Officials at various places on the course. Ron Daines was up to his neck in it as one of the marshalls hauling exhausted paddlers from their boats at the end.

Ron Dains helps undo Gilly's spraydeck at Westminster County Hall Steps.



Many others were there as coaches or supporters, such as "Big" John Day, supporting Brian Greenaway & of course, JH (John Handyside) as Cat & Gilly's coach. Tony & Kay Spencer supporting Hereford crews ... the list goes on.

JH with Cat & Gilly at Froxfield Locks on the canal.

You can distinguish the supporters who have paddled the race themselves from the "friends & family" supporters. The ex-paddlers are in all the right places, at the right time, not in the way, always cheerful when the paddlers are there & working hard. The others have louder voices, stand in the way of other crews, shine bright torches all over the place & say the worst possible things at the worst possible times. In the early dawn, before there was any real light, in the bitter cold of Penton Hook Lock I heard one woman say to one of the haggard looking young paddlers she was supposed to be supporting, "Get on with it! You're such a drama queen!" when he asked for something different to drink because his drink was cold. He'd just paddled 93.4 miles - I bet she has never been where he was at that moment!
Another statistic - NKC have had 21 Senior (non-stop) K2 crews complete DW. Kath & I were one of those. Kath has finished 3 times. Will you be next?

Adventures in DW Land

Around 9:30 on Saturday, Mick, Beth, Shobhanaa & Sarah set of to have an adventure in DW Land, that twilight zone set in the triangle between Real World, Dream Land & Paddlers Place. It's inhabited by 2 creatures in the main, Paddlers & Supporters. The others are Officials, Spectators & General Public. This year we were to be Spectators.
Although it falls in the same geographical region as GMT (or BST) it exists in a time zone of its own, Race Time controlled not by sun, but moon. High tide at Teddington is the critical zero hour whatever Real Time might be. Although "The Schedule" has its own chronology, in retrospect events do not fit into sequences, but occur in a random order. As a result, the following posts relating to DW will follow no obvious pattern.



The places in DW can be arranged in a Geographical sequence & are sampled in this first post.
The Start in a car park in Devizes is a place of controlled terror, anticipation, excitement or boredom depending which kind of inhabitant you are. Only General Public are bored & some of them turn into Spectators after a while & forget to be bored. Reminiscence fills the air, particularly amongst non Paddlers. Ex-paddlers suffer from this the worst.



Canal in the Twilight is another significant venue. If life has seemed easy for Supporters so far, all that is about to change. It is never easy for Paddlers!


Early Morning Thames is the most beautiful place in DW Land, for "sensitive" Spectators & Supporters. For the less sensitive it is just bitterly cold. When I was a Paddler, it seemed both things. It's almost worth being a Paddler again just to experience that feeling. Almost ...
There are few Spectators & no General Public in this region.

Teddington is inhabited by all species. It is a place of interest, excitement & anticipation for all except Paddlers. For them it is just a place of pain. It is the start of that daunting expanse - The Tideway. Anecdotal evidence tells of many varied monsters that swallow Paddlers whole - Big Waves, Strong Currents, High Winds, Sandbanks, Numb-Bum & worst, the dreaded Pleasure Craft! Many General Public are converted to Spectators here. Some even speculate on being a Paddler ... briefly.

The Finish is located in the City of Westminster in the shadow of Big Ben. A place of hopes & fears, laughter & tears. Here, one battle ends & another begins. Getting home awake is the main struggle for all species except General Public. Here, General Public outnumbers all other species especialy as the climate becomes warmer.

For more about our random adventures in this strange land, look out for the posts with DW in their title or labels.

Round the Bridges

It was a warm, still & for the most part, sunny evening, for the first Round the Bridges of the season.

As always, Dave was there with stop watch & clipboard. He'd just driven the squad boats back from Seville where they had been at a pre season training camp.

The attendence was fair, but not overwhelming. Ralph & Hayleigh were about it for the seniors, with Des, Tim & Norman the veteran contingent.

Sarah, Shobhanaa, Beth & Michael made up the juniors. It was good to see Nat out paddling again too.

There were PBs from Michael & Shob. The rest of us watched.

Clifton & high winds

Strong winds yet again contributed to last night's time trial. Nobody did PBs, in fact most people were just glad to get it over & done with. The novelty of paddling in daylight has worn off, what we want is some warm sunny evenings with no wind. The juniors put in a good showing with 4 paddling & one timekeeping.
The highlight of the evening was the bellowed conversations after paddling. In fact the wind from the hair dryers was stronger than the one outside & twice as loud. No doubt Dave will add a few £s onto the membership fees for habitual culprits

Gailey Marathon

What can I say about Gailey!? Three of us thought we had missed the start of the race, (but in fact only one crew had so that was quite good)! After the starts, one k1 clipped his paddles on a barge and had a swim (but I suppose considering how many barges there were and how bumpy the water was, it was quite fortunate that only one of us experienced a swim in the canal)! Then came the results; some well placed k1s with a number of 2nds and 3rds, as well as the k2 coming 5th despite having missed their start, although two of us did get demoted! (However I guess two demotions isn't too bad, as it means the rest of the NKC paddlers definitely did reasonably well)!

Gailey

On Sunday we raced at Gailey which is a narrow canal race with lots of barges and very wavey bumpy water. Lizzie and I both raced in Division 8 and despite quite alot of trouble with canal boats finnished 2nd and 3rd, it was very wavey at the start but calmed down after a while. It wasn't the easiest race but was definitely interesting and kind of fun so was a good day overall. So even if you did miss your start, fall in or get demoted, well done to everyone who raced! :)
Beth.

Gailey Photos

Tony, Kath, Sarah, Beth, Lizzie, Shobhanaa & Mick did Gailey. I'm not sure why, it hasn't improved since I last did it. In fact it hasn't improved since I first did it over 30 years ago!