It's snow fun anymore

After a quick dash over to Matt's in the snow we got launched, well Matt prepared the boat whilst Lee faffed around with his kit before climbing into the rear cockpit.

We set off to reach Pangbourne, and return. The temperature was a few degrees warmer than yesterday and there was no ice forming on the boat or us! Lee was using poggies vs. gloves which are wind proof nylon bags which fit onto the paddle into which you place your bare hands and therefore still retain the feel of the paddle.

We elected to do the long portage at Mapledurham lock as the lock cut was iced over and the weir pool was still turbulent below the lock.

The 300 odd metre run in the snow was amusing, after running the lock we put back in toward the end of the pontoon as the upstream lock cut was heavily iced over too. Lee got in first taking a mass of snow into the cockpit as he slid off the side into the boat.

Upstream the Pangbourne pound was quite high, holding more water than we had experinced before, we made short work of the run to the bridge and were quickly turning for the return leg.

After Mapledurham lock downstream we met with the club paddlers who were looping the island, although they were in front of us we kept pace with the good club paddlers in K2s which was pleasing although they turned back upstream so we did not have chance to race back so raced on ourselves instead.

We were pleased with the time of 01:48:43 at an average speed of 6.3 mph which is a whole 0.1 mph faster than our previous best, our max speed was 9.2 mph on the return leg and we burnt almost 1,000 calories. We were pleased with the time as we felt that we were not pushing too hard and the freezing conditions were against us.

Lee is off to sunnier climes for a few days with work leaving Matt to his own devices at the club.

We are now focussed on our first Waterside Race, Waterside A on Sunday 7th February so just three weekends to practise.....