An alternative humorous take on the Canoeing the Continent Expedition 2013, written by James Warner Smith and Nathan Wilkins at the time. Jokes, poems and fictional stories from their journey by canoe across Europe.
There once were two boys in a boat.
They shouted to me and I quote,
"We've travelled so far
We've done the Loire
Just 3000 more miles I hope"
They'd been paddling the whole time upstream,
An incredible sight to be seen.
Rugged and tough,
Their tans were so buff,
Nice lads, if you know what I mean!
They set up their camp on the shore
Much faster than any before
Then straight to the town
Without turning round
But at the old river they swore.
And one day James and Nathan stopped at a village. The village was deep in the Loire valley. The village was comprised of a few houses, a church, a café and a tourist information centre alongside an otherwise deserted stretch of the Loire.
The villagers were shocked when James and Nathan arrived. Handsome strangers, by now the two were tanned, had thick moustaches and bulging biceps.
However it was not their Herculean looks that shocked the villagers. The villagers heard James and Nathan speak a strange language. Although some of the words may have began life in a French dictionary, every sentence seemed to finish with the word 'mate'. Further the villagers saw that the strangers carried their paddles everywhere and seemed to have named them - as well as their biceps.
The villagers saw the strangers march straight to the tourist information centre. However, they did not stay in the village long. Rather the villagers saw James make frantic use of the WiFi apparently trying to contact somethings or persons called first Cathy and then Facebook. Meanwhile, Nathan made straight for the toilets and returned from the sink carrying several litres of tap water as if it was holy.
Having replenished themselves, the strangers were next seen to eat what appeared to be jam and something called peanut between two slices of bread - despite the adjacent café. The owner of the café swore that James had also asked for the local beer, despite the Loire valley being world famous for wine and the fact that vineyards were evident for miles about.
To this day the villagers do not know what to make of these strange visitors canoeing up the river. Nevertheless the villagers wished the strangers Bon voyage and nodded and smiled when Nathan appeared to reply that they were going to sea a dead Turkey.
There was the first time of course, but I'm not talking about the first time. That time the pair hit a sandbank and began to get out for the inevitable tow. Nathan choosing the side that hadn't hit the sand and floundering on his back in the unexpectedly deep water, an immediate grin on his face. James, seeing his mighty companion in trouble, leapt from the canoe to hold her from drifting out further. He too hit the unexpected depths, realising too late that they had both now drifted. With little fuss and much laughter, together the devilsome duo swam back to the sand and aboard their ship.
But I'm not talking about that time, the comic error and the refreshing swim, no, I'm talking about that other time. That time a combination of tiredness and confidence took our two strong lads to the tree. The arching branches that swept out into the flowing river. The rippling water that ran over the lower branch as the leaves of the higher branch dangled overhead. There must be room between those bows. To the breach the boys headed, steady as they surged over the fast water.
They had overcome the fallen tree, the end was in sight, but the water had not had its way. Quickly turning in the current, our boys found themselves side on amongst the leaves. They dithered, they dathered, then, as water nipped at the side of the canoe, they climbed the mighty oak as the canoe was sucked beneath.
What next for the pair, our boys in buoyancy aids?! Well, time for a break they think. A moment to enjoy the shade of the leaves, the beauty of the bark and the stunning view of the mighty Loire; its blue waters, its glistening waves, the floating flip-flops. Ah. The floating flip-flops. Oh, and some paddles breaking up the natural landscape. James, the canoe on a rope held tightly in his grasp, considers the merky waters and a potentially cold willy and wonders how badly paddles are really needed this upstream work. Nathan, on the other hand, sees another opportunity to maximize fitness and all round body strength. He dives high into the air from his branch in the river and hits the water like Tom Daley in his 12yr old hay day.
As Nathan swims for Thierry, the paddle he so cherishes, James stands and watches his companion disappearing with the current. He looks too at the canoe, bobbing a the end of the rope just beyond his perch in the river. The canoe, two bags, three barrels and a ruck sack are strung out in a neat line and James stands firm with the rope wondering how long he can hang on. The rope tugs in his sweaty palms as it dawns on him that he must meet the same fate as Nathan. Releasing the rope, he hurls himself from the branch, knees tucked beneath him, arms wrapped around, a cannon ball any kid would be proud of. Shortly at the canoe, he swims it to shore and lashes it to the nearest tree with the knot of a naval officer.
Now our pair are separated, a two man team divided by disaster. They call out to one another and Nathan rounds the corner, two paddles and a water bottle held aloft with pride. But a third spare paddle is missing, it lacks the fine wooden feel of our duo's trusted tools, but its red plastic calls enticingly from the middle of the river.
James embarks on the long swim while Nathan turns and bails out the 17ft canoe. James swims and Nathan bails. And it continues as time passes. By noon the tasks have neared completion. Nathan has an empty canoe and James has in hand a third paddle, along with some flip-flops and a bottle found on his voyage. Now far downstream, James gets to shore and clambers up the bank.
Our boys, divided by distance but not by courage, make their way towards one another, bounty in hand. Together they stand, warriors against the river, crusaders against the current. With all the imagery of a biblical scene, the pair, battered and bleeding, divide bread on the banks of the river. They raise a soggy baguette and peel away the sodden paper bag. Together our boys sit looking out at the fallen tree, it's lower branch in water, the upper in the sun, and they chomp on buttery baguette, served damp, just the way it should be. The tree looks back at them and laughs. It laughs at their stupidity and smiles at their recovery, the bleeding warriors on the banks of the Loire.
That was the time I am talking about. That time with the tree and the floating paddles. That time, not this other times still to come.
Young or old, black or white, French or French... Most people that we meet now receive the sob story of our stolen equipment. I think France is probably getting a bit bored of it. It was therefore a pleasant surprise to come across two canoeists turned cyclists with a tale of woe that was almost comparable with our own...
"We were also canoeing se continent," said jean Pierre. "There were cinq of us: moi, Pierre here..."
(most french people are called Jean Pierre or Pierre)
"...there was also our three friends: monsieur Anglais, monsieur Ecossais et monsieur Irlandaise. Moi et Pierre went to see ze tour de France, leaving ze three others to look after ze canoe. They sat in ze canoe in a nice area slightly out of town and surrounded by woodland.
But, unknown to our friends, ze area was bad. Soon a tribe of young rascals set upon our friends. In short our friends were pussays and were soon begging the rascals to leave them alone. They begged and begged the rascals to leave them, our bags and ze canoe.
Growing tired of ze whinging tourists, ze lead rascal made a deal. If they gave ze rascals something of use they would be left in peace. But, if they failed, each would be stripped of his clothes and thus his dignity. Each of our three friends went to the canoe in search of a useful item.
First to return from the canoe was monsieur Anglais, bringing with him a solar panel. With a malicious smile ze lead rascal told monsieur Anglais that he would still be stripped of his clothes unless he could squeeze ze solar panel up his derriere."
- yeah, I was a bit worried about where the story was going at this point as well -
Jean Pierre continued, "With a reluctant sigh monsieur Anglais attempted to fit ze solar panel up his derriere. Although ze Safari Mobile power pack is small and efficient..."
(let me know if you have a spare, you might have heard that we recently lost one)
"... Try as he might, monsieur Anglais could not fit it up his derriere. Subsequently stripped of his clothes and his dignity, monsieur Anglais wept and made for the nearest airport.
Next came monsieur Ecossais carrying 5 water purification tablets. On hearing of ze additional task he was shocked. However, knowing that life could be worse he put ze first tablet up his derriere. And ze second tablet. Plenty of space for ze third, and ze fourth.
But then suddenly monsieur Ecossais burst out laughing. At once ze derriere released. The pills fell to the floor. Immediately ze rascals stripped him of his clothes and thus his dignity. Having been so humiliated, monsieur Ecossais also made for home and the nearest airport."
At this, Jean Pierre smiled. Jzimmee and I were shocked by the man's lack of sympathy for his former boys. However, he again continued...
"Ze next day monsieur Anglais et monsieur Ecossais were sat in the airport waiting for their respective flights home. As upset as he was, monsieur Anglais managed to ask monsieur Ecossais why he had laughed. Once again monsieur Ecossais chuckled. He told how he had seen monsier Irlandaise dragging the 17ft canoe back to the rascals."
Life could be worse.
- The traveller always makes more friends when he carries his paddle.
- He at the back smells the farts of he at the front.
- Sandals on, the way will be smooth. Sandals off, the way will be rocky.
- The greater your effort to master the French language, the more likely the person is English.
- The greater the crowd the more likely the fail.
- He who has a girlfriend has a massive phone bill.
- The current is always weaker on the other side of the river.
- The bigger the motorboat, the bigger the douchebag.
- Bridges always look close, but never get closer.
- He who writes the alternative blog is the only one who finds it funny.
One week in and all the talk is about Jzimmee and Nathan,
Their stream of photos and list of exploits make a hearty compilation;
But they fail to recognise who is the main protagonist,
Starting below the shoulder and ending before the wrist,
It is Claude. Claude is the real hero,
Without his sun-burnt efforts these boys would be at point zero.
Unlike twin Raymonde, Claude cannot write,
But he plies his paddle all day long and does not care for being on the right.
Claude has grown more than anyone on this trip,
With veins poking out he is unsure that old sleeves will fit.
So next time you peruse the canoeing the continent expedition,
Spare a moment for the big gun on this continent crossing mission.
Please send any fan mail for Claude to:
Claude,
Nathan's left bicep,
Montsureau,
France
My reflections on an expedition with a focus on immersing oneself in the environment and gaining and understanding of the river, its uses, and its ecosystems.
So I walk, a slow walk, my head bowed low and a cap pulled down to shade my head from the evening sun. In my hand dangles a plastic bag, swinging with my stride and rustling in the breeze. I find a spot. A small clearing in amongst some thicket where the turf has been packed down by the countless hooves of the local herd. I look up, no cows to be seen, no close encounter with beast to be had. Sure the area is clear, I pause, put down the bag and ceremoniously unsheathe the tool of my craft. Glinting in what sunlight remains is the trowel. Forgotten are its days of floundering in top soil, it is plunged into the hard packed earth, burrowing into the terrain and scarring my selected spot on the river bank with a gaping hole. And here I stand. One on one with nature. Just me and the earth. I resheathe the trowel, a reminder of the human world, and I face the opening in all it's glory.
Only one thing of mine remains to be unsheathed. My back to the chasm, I bend at the knees and reveal myself to the world.
The flutter of the breeze is cool upon my cheeks. I feel it too on my face. And in my moment, half sat, half stood, I look out upon the scene: the river flowing just beyond the bank, the sound of the birds singing their evening song, frogs quarrelling over space and me, hovering above the thicket, embracing nature.
Deed done. I wipe my smelly arse and head back to bed. Solid dump.
"Bonjour!" Boomed out of the tour boat microphone.
"Bonjour mon copain... c'est tres dure... mais c'est la vie?!" Whined back from the green canoe.
Upon hearing this concise description of canoeing upstream, the tour guide of the pleasure boat continued his monologue. Now although we are both 250% fluent in the old francais, unfortunately because the boat rapidly left us behind, we're not completely sure as to what the tour guide preceded to say. Nonetheless, it was most probably something along the lines of...
"Wow. D-O-R-A. Now there's a fine and not at all immature name for a 17ft canoe.
Sacred Bleu! Those two young Englishmen are smelling beau - they must shower on at least a daily basis. I know they were English, ladies and gentlehommes, because their grasp of the Francais langue was so bon.
Ladies and gentlehommes, I would like to make deux final comments about those fine young Englishmen. First, ses biceps sont massif! Second, their moustaches - oh la la - their trois days without shaving is clearly noticeable to me the casual observer."
As I said, we can't guarantee that this was exactly what the tourguide said as our canoe rocked in the wake of his boat... But it's a likely summary.
First of all I'm going to tell you about packing. First we packed a canoe. Next we tucked in two paddles. Then we got a bag. No, two bags. We put in toothbrushes. Then we packed toothpaste, dental floss, mouthwash and other interesting things.
To be honest. My mummy did it. (I hope we've got everything we need. If not she's getting a bollocking).
In other news: today we left, bound for Istanbul. The send off was simply unreal. When we got to Nantes city centre there was quite a frenzy. People everywhere, crowding the streets around the river banks as we struggled to push our way through to the waters edge to see what was going on.
What was going on, it seems, was us! The fans were out in force and when they realised who had barged their way to the water they went wild. And I mean wild. Roses being hurled left, right and centre, cameras flashing, girls screaming, guys screaming, dogs howling and babies crying. Like I said, quite a frenzy.
We boarded Dora and donned our life vests, prepared for the drama, turmoil and vino. Heads down, paddling hard, we left the screaming crowds behind us, heading into the distance at a rate of knots.
0.01knots to be precise.
0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false
/* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-ansi-language:EN-US;}
You might have noticed… who am I kidding? You noticed. I’ve made it. I’m a local celebrity.
The glare of the written press. (Honestly, I always read the Medway Messenger and the Hertfordshire Mercury and not just since they had an article on me – p42 in the Mercury right next to the article about dogs that eat chips if you didn’t know.)
The live prime time radio interview… who doesn’t listen to BBC 3 Counties in the Middle of the afternoon?
The online presence. Alright, yeah, Bieber’s got his beliebers … but my Twitter followers have been in double figures for at least a week. And I’m not even related to three of them. @canoeingEurope if you haven’t already joined the bandwagon. #pleasefollowmebecauseit’sgoingtobelonelyinmycanoe
Anyway, I was doing an interview recently – another one (that’s two now) – and the kid asked me what was the hardest thing about my trip. I had to tell him, “Kid, it’s just the pressure, the paparazzi, my public. It’s so hard being this fit, this famous and still fitting my ego in a 17 foot plastic canoe.”
I mean, I’m a good looking lad. Alright, I’m a very good looking lad. But literally. The ladies. Lit-er-all-y, all over me.
A girl asked me to marry her on Friday. She may or may not have been joking. The shock may or may not have gone to my head and I may or may not have been sick shortly afterwards. Another girl smiled at me on Saturday. Yes. Smiled. Well, part grimace, part smile. But definitely at least 50% smile. I got a peck on the cheek off a ‘babe’ on Monday night – YOLO. And, I almost pulled the other night. I say almost… I did take her back to mine. However, I think being that night’s chosen canoe for a bit of upstream paddling as you might say… Well it must have gone to her head. When she saw my world-famous bed, she stole my duvet and went to sleep. At least I got to practice using my sleeping bag. True story.
As I say, being a local celebrity is a hard job. My life’s like a Craig David song, but rather than chilling on Saturday I get in a canoe and paddle around the midlands. Just another week in the life of an average Joe, cum canoeist, cum athlete, cum local hero, cum international superstar, cum here ladies I’m still single etc.
So, Nantes on Sunday. I don’t like to blow my own trumpet. But I know I’ll be missed. YOLO Swaggins, over and out.
*This blog post was not written by James Warner Smith who remains happily married.
We train to canoe: technical skills and handling the boat. We train our minds: reflecting on the task that lays ahead. And we train our bodies: building muscle for the months of paddling.
After a long day of hard paddling I'm spent. My body groans knowing that tomorrow I will have to do it all again. Pulling back my duvet to crawl into bed I catch my reflection in the window. A new man is reflected, a different man, a man etched with scars and scrapes, war wounds from his voyages down the mighty river Avon. This man has large, dangerously muscular, shoulders, the shoulders of an ox. Having finally climbed into bed I lay there, tingling. My body tingles partly from the touch of stinging-nettles, the second-most lethal predator in the UK after the honey badger, that have attacked my legs through various points in the day. But my body also tingles as it grows. That's right. At night I am kept awake by the constant feeling of my growing biceps. My biceps grow, straining to break out of my skin. The sheer weight of my freshly formed muscles, which develop at a faster pace than my lungs, is crushing me and my breathing is gasped. In the last two days I have had to reinforce my bed frame twice. The first time was a general restructuring, adding steel supports to the four bed corners, but the second adjustments were more specific: adding two more legs to the bed beneath the resting point of my arms and an extra frame to support my shoulders. It seems absurd to say, but tonight I may be forced to make further adjustments. My arms are simply too big for my bed.
The result of such growth is a struggle. It is a small wonder I can continue in my day to day life. Hours of sleep lost to my growing muscles and new body weight, I arise in the morning tired and confused. I make my breakfast but accidentally bend the spoon underestimating the strength in my ginormous forearms. Carefully I pick up another spoon. I snap it clean in half. On my seventh attempt I have finally gauged my strength and have a tough spoon in hand. I demolish an entire pack of cereal (a large pack with "50% extra FREE"), ten slices of toast and four raw eggs. That is merely an entrée. After that, I have my breakfast.
Day 4 of training. (Yep, we’ve done 4 days of training for fourmonths of canoeing and we start in two weeks – don’t know what you’re worried about.)
Reporting back after acclimatisation (getting sunburnt) and camouflage (we’re both brown) training.
Mission:
Mission report:
Next report due at the end of alcohol resistance training.
While we intend to maintain a serious blog, let's not beat around thebush... we're funny guys and over the decades this trip is actually likely to take we're not going to let our respective comedy geniuses go to waste. Note: The events narrated on this second blog are unlikely to be true.
For now, I'll tell you about what happened on our second 'training session'. Basically it was a rainy day - I mean there was a monsoon - and after several miles of paddling, we came across one of those classy midlands drinking establishments. So we were sitting there, taking on ‘energy drinks’ and out of absolutely no where a giraffe walks in. Yep, honestly a giraffe. He said, “Mate, is that your canoe?” I mean, I was surprised as you are. But I told him it was. So he goes, “You two can’t be real men sharing that canoe.” Anyway, push came to shove so like any Warwick student, we challenged him to an energy drinking competition. (We were on the blackcurrent.) Now after a few pints, it was clear that we’d got the better of this giraffe, who was starting to sway and looking worse for wear. So like the honourable lads we are, we pretended to both need the toilet and then made for the exit. But… as we were leaving the Giraffe – turns out he was called Gerry – slipped off his chair. The barman, hearing the commotion, told us in no uncertain terms, “Lads, you can’t leave that lyin’ there.”
So we told him, “It’s not a lion… it’s a giraffe.”
Classic.
The official website of James Warner Smith – author and travel writer. Editor of the UK’s best selling camping guidebooks, the Cool Camping series, James Warner Smith is a travel and lifestyle writer with a focus on the great outdoors. As well as appearances on television and radio, James has had articles published across the national press, in magazines and online.
