2012 Devizes to Westminster Race

Our trip was certainly an adventure, all started very well good weather conditions no wind and drizzle, and going to schedule until…….. a hold up at the long tunnel a slow moving barge took 21mins to clear the 1 mile tunnel …… we got a bit cold but carried on no problems at all. Everyone has dark times and I had mine at about 50 miles, I went through a sick stage…… but just drank and drank and soon pulled out of it. We pulled back all our lost tunnel time by Marlow (70 miles), and moved back into the lead in Vet female catagory (3rd in ladies overall and 3rd in century caagory … ages adding up to a 100, not really sure if I should own up to that one!) … so feeling great and both moving into the night strong and positive! The night was warm and dry but the lack of flow made the Thames feel like paddling through mud, especially building the momentum back up after each portage, the portages were very high so getting in and out was rather tough too, but we were still going to hit the tide 2hrs in so all was fine we were ‘on schedule’. I was getting very excited about the tideway and had already started visualising famous bridges and the Westminster steps …… How wrong was I?

Then going down from Molesy to Teddington (107miles), completely out of the blue Tamsin started to have back pain and stomach cramps. We were just pulling into ‘Royals canoe club’ (400mbeforeTeddington Rollers) for our spraydecks and camel backs and Tamsin cramped up and capsized the boat, we got ourselves together and got back in thinking she was fine ……. anyway pulled out ofTeddington and same happened again….. we went for another swim!