Sauntering Vaguely Downward

I rather missed the boat on this one, apologies for its lateness. In my defence, we've mostly not been in the UK for the past two weeks.

April starts off quite domestic with lots of cat clips, and finishes in central Europe with lots of adventure clips. We travelled from [home] to Vienna, Austria via nine different trains, one of which morphed into a German rail replacement bus services which turned out to be terribly civilised.

Today's big adventure was a 12 km canoe trip down the Loire.

I say this like I had any idea what was going to happen in advance.

After the previous day's conversations over supper and wine, I was convinced we were going to arrive at a pontoon to be greeted by some sort of official company-shirt-wearing guide, climb into waterproofs and life jacket, and be placed in a boat with said guide and strict instructions to strap the children in and not let them touch anything.

What actually happened is that we walked to a nondescript strip of sand and waited for a chap in an ancient blue van to turn up 10 minutes late, pile us all in, and drive us 25 minutes up the road with no explanation. He then backed down a tiny gravel road to another strip of sand, on which rested three canoes. He handed out life vests and a couple of large waterproof tubs into which he instructed us to put anything we didn't wish to lose in the river. He also gave the children glasses chains (which they got to keep as souvenirs).

He handed us each an oar (three adults and three children) and after some extremely vague instructions about keeping to the right and watching for sand bars, he sent us off, saying he'd meet us where he'd picked us up, in "a few hours".

As we pushed off, he remembered one more vital instruction about passing under the bridges into Orleans towards the end of the journey. "Be careful under the second bridge," he advised laconically. "Aim for the middle and stay steady. It's a bit rough. Try not to capsize."

You can see where this is going, I'm sure.

We rowed peacefully for a few kilometers, stopping on a wide stretch of sandy beach to dig holes, eat cookies, and hunt for shells and interesting chunks of flint. We saw a white egret, grey heron, terns fishing, and lots of water-skimming bugs. People waved at us from the banks. We picked out our ideal riverside cottages.

The current moved us along rapidly. We began to get a little hot and tired, but rallied well with the help of waffles. The first of the bridges hove into view, and we braced ourselves for the passage, which was swift and bumpy, but left us dry.

Then we reached the second bridge. We aimed carefully at the middle arch, tucked in our oars, and braced.

We got absolutely soaked.

We took on a lot of water.

We did not capsize, but it was a close run race between that and sinking. 

Thankfully there was only one more uninteresting bridge passage before we reached our starting point. Keiki managed not to fall in the river as we landed. The chap who had provided the canoes managed not to look too amused at our condition on arrival. We managed to pretend we hadn't been genuinely terrified.

We had enough dry clothes to cobble together outfits to walk the mile home in, and we found a bag of Haribo that we thought we'd lost in the bottom of the rucksack. Plus, still alive! So we're counting this one as a win.