The Royal

The Royal is a 19 mile race from Runnymede to Teddington passing through just 6 locks. The race was scheduled to start at 12.00hrs for the senior men in K2's. Here are Simon and Rob getting into the Thames at Runnymede for the start of the race. It was a warm sunny day but we had to remember there are wide wind-swept areas of river and the weather can change quite significantly.

Len and Nick are seen here below getting into the water in a Condor K2. The boat is faster than our Waterman and one of the more stable racing K2 boats but the skill of staying upright in such a boat needs to be learnt and its much easier to learn in your early teens.

To their credit, Len and Nick have had some training and spent several evenings on the river trying to aquire the skills to stay upright. I paddled from Marlow to Hurley to meet them last Thursday and they were paddling along nicely. Today there was quite a bit of banter as to what comment they would make as they passed us in the race and they had settled on a smug grin.

In the top picture you can see us all at the start. There were just eleven senior K2 crews. Our boat is the orange and black one nearest the camera and you can see it is wider than all the other boats as it is built to be a sea kayak. We reckon that the stability of this boat will stand us in good stead for the Devizes to Westminster race in 3 weeks time.

Just after the start, Nick and Len were turned over and the moment was caught on camera by my daughter Emily. The race didn't get any better for the lads and they were soon in again in an area where the banks were too high to get out. Only one thing to do and that is make like a floater. They did just that for about 6 mins until they could get out and by that time they were very cold indeed and retired. Well done lads for giving it a go. We admire your pluck.

Rob and Simon knew nothing of this and were paddling hard expecting Len and Nick to be on them at any time and with a smug smile. We would without a doubt have preferred that. In this race we learnt not to go into the shallows. As we cut one corner it was like the brakes going on and we could see the sandy bottom about 18 inches below the boat. At one portage about 10yds from where we were due to get out two K2's shot up the inside of us. We were not impressed until we saw it was it was the red haired twins? (just 15 yrs old) in a duel with another young ladies crew. My son was not impressed after the race that were were soundly beaten by a couple of 15yr old girls and even less so when I told him that they had barged us out of the way at a portage. They are good......very good.

As we paddled away from the last lock we knew it was about 3.8miles to go and I thought the guy in the briefing had said the finish was just before a bridge. The bridge came into site and we gave it everything to get to the finish and catch up with a yellow C2. We passed the C2 and looked for the finish but it was a long way past the bridge and it was a real slog to maintain the pace we had set thinking the finish was in sight.

Out of the ten senior K2 boats that finished we came last with a time of 2hrs 42mins and we have never paddled as hard. Our average speed was 6.8mph.