In the bleak midwinter...

...snow lay all around, earth was hard as iron, water like a stone!

This Christmas carol was a good description of Devon this morning

However, I had taken a day of work and we were going paddling, whatever the conditions. Due to the weather forecast and roads report we decided not to go as planned at 08:00 but wait until after 09:00. So at 09:45, we had defrosted and packed the team car and set off for Tiverton. However, when we got to the Grand Western Canal we came across a problem

Yes the water was like a stone. The ice wasn't thick enough to stand on but I was able to put one foot on without breaking it. It was too thick to try and use the Condor as an ice breaker. If it was a glass club boat then it would have been ok but as it's mine and is carbon Kevlar I wasn't prepared to put it's tensile strength to the test. So we needed a new plan. Exeter or Taunton. I phoned AS Watersports and asked them for a canal report. They told me it had ice but it wasn't too thick.  Exeter it was then.

The canal had ice but it wasn't as thick as Tiverton so we decided to give it a go.

We dropped the boat in and broke the ice. Once we were both in we took a bit longer than necessary to get off. Richard had never paddled through ice before and was considering the implications of swimming in an iced up canal. AS Watersports were our safety back up. If we weren't back before 13:30 send out the search party. Once we were steady we set off through the ice. The wings were more like ice axes than paddles as we tried to follow the winding path another small craft had cut earlier. I took a while to make it through the ice into clear water. The only problem was that the clear water didn't last for long. We came to more ice thicker than that which we had just paddled through. We decided to portage and put in on the River Exe rather than the canal.

Once on the river we got going with a few wobbles. We portaged again at river left of the Flower Pots. Above the Flower Pots the river was iced again. We decided this was not a good idea. Back in and paddling we headed back down stream. This now felt the best we've paddled and moving at a decent pace. I decided that if we couldn't paddle a decent distance then we'd practice some quality portages.

The portages we did weren't Brian Greenham ultrafast back in the boat before we get out but they are improving.

I really don't think Richard realises how quick he's improving

Very big thanks to AS Watersports too!

Tom