The End

We pulled out at Wooton Rivers

No idea why we couldn't paddle off side?

The fact of the matter was we were losing time and wouldn't have done Newbury in time

Fin

The day

It's 08:09 and I'm sitting down to breakfast! Usually at this point I'd be putting the number on the boat and thinking of going, but this year I'm thinking of how to fill the time between now and check in

the night before...

This is my last night at home before I head down to Devizes

I've just finished packing my bags, I've remembered everything I was going to forget and everything else isn't important enough to worry about! It's like the night before you fly, I don't know how my passport could escape but I always check where it is!!!

My alarm is set for 05:20, my bus to London is at 06:45, hopefully I'll sleep on the bus but probably not!

Just need to get a taxi number for Pewsey and then everything is sorted

The nice people at the Bear are doing specially early breakfasts on Friday, so I can eat before tagging time

Saturday I don't need an early breakfast as I'm not tagging and we're not leaving until the afternoon aiming to be at Teddington 3 minutes before evening tide, apparently we may have to paddle a little but, hopefully not much!

It is strange for the fact that this time I won't have one of my vehicles on the course

Anyway, time to write an e-mail to the support team and then off to sleep!

The morning after

I'm sitting at the breakfast table writing my blog, we're doing our entry for the DW at the moment

Last night we did our first night paddle and some timing. We had a few new wobbles but all in all I'm more than happy and that's why the entry goes in today!

It's not downhill from here it's free fall

We have the biggest support team I've had since 2007, so I need to be nice to them

Like Mr Yeamans, north of the border, we haven't done any Watersides or Thamesides. Well we'll find out on the day if that makes a difference. We've got a short session this morning and one more training session before the race.

C2 training

Today wasn't about distance or speed it was all about polishing the edges

Yesterday we added the switch and we even swapped ends (of the boat not the paddle)

Today seemed to be going backwards (we did that too!) but we actually sorted out the small problems and stopped worrying about wobbles and turned this into forward motion!

http://youtu.be/4W4ui7Xb1ZU

Onwards

Yesterday we had our first session on the Thames. It was about as hard as it gets on moving water in a racing C2! However, after a lot of wobbles we got off the water- dry

Today we decided to do speed and portage work at Crofton Flight, the only problem was ice.

There was about 50m we could paddle, so onwards to Newbury

Various sections of the canal were clear of ice but we didn't want to get on the water and turn a corner to find more ice.

At Newbury we parked at Northcroft and got on. Turning left we found.... ICE!x


Plan B- paddle towards town. We used this to do portage practice.

On the way back to Northcroft I thought we should use the vacant angler's platform to practice for that wonderful portage at Blakes Lock. This proved very useful on several levels

Back to the car- 1 flask of Heinz tomato soup, worth the cold

C2- game back on

Today I did a top secret try out with a new prospective DW 2013 partner.

For someone who's never paddled C2, never mind a racing C2, he did excellent!

Most times everyone I've got into a racing canoe we have lots of wobbles, however, this was very different. My top secret partner took to it like a duck to Hoisin sauce!

So now the game is back on