Lee drove to the club early to collect the K2 Condor, whilst Matt was still asleep at home, the weather was horrible getting soaked just walking to the car.
With the boat loaded by Lee it was off up the hill to collect Matt, as I drove past the lights were on which was a good sign, hopefully he had finished his poached eggs on toast.
We drove over to Aldermaston and thankfully the rain stopped, we were quickly set up and got into the boat in the canal, Lee in the front Matt in the back.
There was quite a narrow channel on account of the double and triple moored barges, it would be interesting in the Thameside 1 races with hundreds of boats going down. In our minds we had a 2:12 time to beat, so with the timer started we banged on.
No sooner do you start than you reach a lock at Padworth, then under the swing bridge at Padworth and Towney Bridge, at Ufton swing bridge we drifted slowly towards the bridge and just scrapped underneath Lee leaning far forward on the bow, making a mental note that we could see some concrete about 2" clear of the water, if that is not showing next time we would need to portage this bridge.
Other hazards included a closed lock for maintenanance I think at Sulhamstead where they had put a construction fence across the canal which fortunately was floating so we paddled over it and it did not snag the rudder.
The portages were going well and we were not hanging around everything seemed smooth, also we encountered some good flow where the Kennet flows on and off the canal.
We nailed the portage this time at Shenfield Mill having to walk over reeds to get into the boat put in in the weir stream and saved minutes over our effort a couple of months back involving a wasp nest. As we headed under the Rose Kiln lane bridge on the outskirts of Reading I looked at the time 1:28 it was fast, definitely up on our previous best however, I said to Matt we needed to pull our fingers out if we were to get a decent time (did not want him slacking in the back).
County and Blakes locks passed without incident and we were spat out into the Thames which was flowing quite well, but against us....
County Lock in the centre of Reading
We hugged the Tesco's bank then portaged at Reading lock before the final sprint to the finish just in time to see the rest of the club launching for the Sunday morning session.
We had nailed our record and finished in 1:55:51 at an average speed of 6.6 mph we were chuffed and cannot wait to run this again when the new boat comes.
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