Weekend Punting

So I went punting twice this weekend, which was a "bank holiday" weekend in England. On Saturday, it was sunny, and the river was extremely crowded, so I only punted up at the far end of the river to avoid too many collisions. On Monday, it was colder and cloudier, and so I did a bit more punting, and am definitely getting better at it. We also took a lot more toys punting on Monday, like cameras and a GPS. I was able to go at a steady 1mph, but Nick could go up to 2mph, and even got the GPS to jump up to 3 at one point.

When we left for punting on Monday, the punt shed seemed to be out of oars, which are really only necessary if you can't steer (both Nick and I can), if you need to push off of obstacles (only really a problem if you can't steer, plus I had brought an umbrella in case of rain that could double as a pokey-stick), and if you drop a punt pole, which seemed unlikely. But I convinced Nick to throw a broken plastic kayak paddle that was in the punt shed into the boat, just in case.

It turned out to be a good decision, because at one point I overestimated the depth of the river while simultaneously underestimating how close we were to a bridge while simulaneously overestimating the height of the bridge when I lowered the punt pole. As we moved forward, the pole got stuck between the ground and the bridge, so I was smart and let go, and we continued sailing on without the punt pole. So Nick half-paddled us back to it with the broken kayak paddle, and meanwhile another boat had gotten it down and torpedoed it back in our direction (they float). So we got it back without too much trouble. But now I've learned to just float slowly under bridges. You can see the punt pole stuck under the bridge in the background here:



Plenty more photos are up on Facebook here.