Girls Have Fun On the River
On Saturday afternoon we had a girly trip to the river. Choosing the first weekend of the school holidays, in hindsight, wasn't the best idea but three of us were able to make it.
Stacey, Ellie and I played on the river leaving Dave B to watch the cricket at the County Ground.
The three of us spent a couple of hours sprinting between the English and Welsh bridges perfecting our wash hanging and moving from a point of "I don't like you that near my boat, its scary" to happily clashing paddles and running into each other. We had some fun with Ellie in the world's most wobbly boat and Stacey in the blue espada with rudder cables which resembled overcooked spaghetti making any kind of directional control difficult!
Passing under the footbridge by the Boat House an bunch of passers-by started to cheer us on, shouting and encouraging the blue boat, the yellow boat, the red boat in turn.
Having got the wash hanging thing sorted we started to work as a team, rotating the lead around the group after a long discussion about how it might work. Apart from the hard sprint for the person dropping back and round, it was very effective - and much easier than having to paddle on your own for the entire race!
On the way back we did some turns on wide rivers, because we're dead good at 25 point turns on a canal which is only a couple of inches longer than the boat but turns in big spaces are somehow much harder.
Finally we returned to Frankwell for a quick change into dry clothing and a wander into town for the best ice cream in Shrewsbury at Bellini's. Mmm blackberry, hazlenut, tiramissu, raspberry pavlova... what would you choose???
We had so much fun that we decided to do it all again some time. A date in August will be circulated by e-mail.