Matt's report of Avon Descent, 7 Nov.

Both Grant and I had decided to put ourselves through the Ex descent earlier in the year when it all seemed a long way off and we felt brave.  But as the date came closer the prospect of an 19 mile paddle with little reward started to seem a less exciting prospect, when we discovered the Avon descent, only 10 miles.

I feel that we were not taking it all as serriously as we should when at 8.00am on the Sunday morning Grant called me to say that he was probably still over the legal alcohol limit to drive, feeling worse for wear myself, Esther said that she would drive us there, bless her.

Once at the start, surrounded by enthusiastic marathon
paddlers we felt slightly daunted by the photos of the weirs and warnings not to shot this one here and that one there, still as we came from the briefing I just thought I would follow Grant, but he to had not fully taken the details so we decided to just follow who ever was in front.

That is about as exciting as it got.  Met a few interesting characters, paddled 10 miles, looking at the back of Grant for most of the way, wishing that I still had a fiberglass slalom kayak instead of my redline.  The weirs were really of no consequence, because we were "racing" we could not even
stop to play.  Lots of fishermen, one about every 30m, for pretty much the whole distance, I never realised fishing was so popular.

I think that the moral of the story is, don't travel all the way to Stratford to do the Avon descent unless you really
have to.  If you cannot distinguish between the river and the canal you know that there is a long paddle ahead of you.