Tales from Teddington lock

DW 2010 - At Teddigton Lock

I was flicking through my old photos on the computer the other day and came across this one. It was taken at Teddington in the 2010 DW race and the funny thing is I remember very little about being there. I do remember the fact that I had spent the proceeding 30 minutes in tears, gently sobbing in the back of the boat sitting in a pool of my own wee, barely able to lift the paddle shaft above the cockpit. It was not a good place to be. As hard as that was and as low as I got it was still infinitely better to be there and ready to go into London than not there at all. For Adam and I, it is all about Teddington. Whether we catch the tide in the morning or have to wait until the afternoon then as long as we get there then we'll be ok.

Having to wait those few hours for the afternoon tide, should that be necessary, will however bring its own problems. Being members of the Royal which is only a stone's throw from Teddington Lock means that we've got a nice comfortable base in which we can refuel, change and get our heads down for a couple of hours in the warmth until we are let through onto the tidal section. If any members of the Royal are reading this and you see two people that look and smell like tramps lying down in the clubhouse on April 7th, then please do not be alarmed. It's just us. But then, after all our muscles and joints have nicely seized up, tendons have had time to get inflamed after the nurofen's worn off and blisters popped we'll have to get back in the boat and then paddle the tidal Thames in the middle of the afternoon on Easter Sunday, when every boat and everyone and their mother will be out on the river. We are reconciled  to the very real possibility that we may have to do that but we'll be doing our best to ensure that we catch the morning tide, even if that means squeaking through at 8 o' clock. We've got to know the area around the lock very well, with us pounding up and down the Kingston straight and the fact that we are both former Teddington School schoolboys also makes this quite a home from home for us.

On Friday night we headed out from the Royal. We were both clattered after a long day at work so we decided to do a DW paced effort. We paddled down to the lock first which we now use as a short warm up to get settled before we turn back to head up to Hampton Court. As we made our way down to Teddington there was a small group of boats moored on the bank. In front of them was a small speedboat and as we got within 5 metres of it we saw that there was someone in it and they suddenly gunned the engines causing an enormous wash that broke over the front of the kayak sending water into my cockpit. it was obviously done completely on purpose with the intention of capsizing us. We rode it out fine but we were screaming our heads off at him, only to then see another 2 speedboats waiting on the bankside with another 2 morons in them. What kind of dick would think that it's fun to try to capsize a kayak in the dark? They were gunning around well above the speed limit for this section of the Thames without any lights visible!!  Frickin' unbelievable.

We turned across the river and had a great paddle up to Hampton and back and as we got back to the clubhouse we saw one the boats right in the middle of the river. He saw us and started waving a light, not at us, which was the queue for the other 2 speedboats to come through at high speed causing another huge wave. Unfortunately this time we were beam on with a lot of reflection waves coming off of the hard bank from the sailing club next to the Royal, so we were really bounced around this time, but again we stayed upright pretty comfortably. I sincerely wish those 3 blokes a slow and lingering death. I am still wondering whether we should report it to the Police.

In other news......

I went with Mrs Wheezy to the Kingston Phoenix Annual Dinner and Awards evening last night and had a fab time. Had a few cheeky beers and got a couple of medals for some handicap places which was nice and I won a Phoenix mug in the raffle. Today I ran the Nonsuch Park 10k as one of Simon's relatives couldn't run it, so I had his number. As usual, I went out too fast and by halfway I was blowing hard, but I held on to take 4th place and just missed out on ducking under 40 minutes. Next time.......