The Longest Paddle – Cheshire Ring Race, 2011.

Team: Ralph Rhodes & Mike Fennell, “Wing & A Prayer”, Potteries Paddlers/CNCC.

For me this started with my buying a barely used second hand Mad River Explorer canoe on eBay. I collected it en-route to a club camp at Shell Island, North Wales, but it was far too windy for me to take my “new” toy off the car roof to play there that week … she was re-christened as mine at Rudyard Lake the following week.

My once pristine MRE 16TT is alas no longer in concours condition due to our adventures on the Dove (a brilliant once a year paddle weekend organised by Burton Canoe Club), the Dee at very low water (Potteries Paddlers), the Wye/Symonds Yat (PP again) and repeated runs of Jackson’s Rapids at Ironbridge (Crewe & Nantwich CC) … still we both wear our scars with pride and it’s all part of the fun.

Two of our (PP) club members have rolled open canoes … at first you think why? … and then how? … and then wouldn’t that be good fun to try too … so I posted a thread on the Song of the Paddle on rolling a canoe, could you do it and if so how? Graham Cooke (MADCC) replied that not only could he do it but he found it to be a good self rescue technique leaving little water in the canoe. Wow, this may have gone from just a bit of fun to a really useful safety technique … I want to do this and in the course of our emails Graham mentioned that the Paddlers should consider entering a team in the Cheshire Ring Race … hmmm!

At the next PP club meet I mentioned the CRR and Ralph said “I’ve always wanted to do that!” … we had a team. How do you prepare for something like the CRR, what boat should you use and what do you need? Our experiences may help as we’ve now survived the course, so read on and if you are at all tempted, then go for it as you could treasure those memories for life … I’m still wearing a silly grin and it’s five days now since we finished … but do ensure you prepare well for the trip.

Boats – we’ve practice paddled in both my MRE16TT and Ralph’s Old Town Charles River RX, and didn’t notice a difference in speed between them on the water, the real difference was in the weight of them both – the OT Royalex boat was lighter and therefore somewhat easier to portage between locks etc. Our first practice canal run in Feb. was in my boat, ~16miles, and at the end we hardly had the strength to lift my canoe back onto my roof bars, things were not looking good for our attempt at the CRR. With weekly practice sessions our strength and stamina improved.  We toyed with the idea of making an ultra-light wooden framed, pvc skinned boat for the race but having impacted quite a few immersed branches, TVs and other strange things in the canals on our practice runs we rejected the idea. We’ve been told that a Dagger Interlude might be up to 1mph faster than our boats for the same effort, good, but our key aim for our attempt was just to finish. Jensens, carbon/Kevlar canoes etc …. oooh!

Talk to people as you paddle around, it’s amazing what you can find out, for example the gent at Macclesfield Marina (Freedom Boats, http://www.freedomboats.co.uk/) was really helpful when I was kitting my canoe out with ropes and he has all the maps and guides … as with support crews parking at the pubs on the race day, if you stop and use their facilities/moorings - ask & buy something too … it just makes it better for all of us.

MRE16TT moored at Macc. Marina in practice.

Paddles – tried sit & switch with ordinary paddles and couldn’t get it to work at all well and neither of us were comfortable with the technique, I still might make a bent shaft paddle to play with (I’ve half finished one) but for the race we went with our familiar straight shafted wooden paddles.

Practice – essential, approaching race day we ran Marple bottom lock to Portland Basin and back at an average speed of 4mph, we thought that was brilliant in a touring Canadian in which the floor starts to deform, it’s like kneeling on waves, at about 4.5mph. Try to do as many sections of the canal as possible and go and look at the worst sections to assess the portages there, if you can, even if you don’t paddle them. We neglected both the Manchester and the Middlewich to Kidsgrove sections to our cost.

Our “race boat” after a Marple bottom lock to Fairfield Junction practice session, we acquired Ralph’s “race seat” still shrink-wrapped, it was found floating in the canal en-route.

Planning – a British Waterways key is a wonderful thing, it costs £6 and gives you access to water taps and some toilets/shower facilities on the way round. Mail order from BW or better still visit the BW HQ at Red Bull while checking out the Kidsgrove spiral stairs. The key is only of use if you take it with you, I left mine at home on race day (arrgh!!) but an emergency call to our support team meant we were reunited at Marple (phew, happiness is a BW key).

Time your practice runs and use something like the excellent canal guide (http://www.canalplan.org.uk/) to work out exactly how far you’ve paddled and then work out your average speeds.

GEO Projects/British Waterways publish a Cheshire Ring map which is really useful to have, GEO have gone belly up and the future of the map was in doubt, but it’s been taken on by the UK staff and survives. I bought mine from BW HQ (they don’t sell maps but they found/sold one to me, magic). Pearson’s Canal Companion to the Cheshire Ring is excellent, we scanned the little (all left to right) map sections to put together our own race notes with all the details we hoped we’d need, water tap locations, briefing notes, key phone numbers etc, to get us round. Our sheets were printed double sided, numbered and laminated. I paddled all the way round with my reading glasses balanced on the end of my nose but it worked really well. Our only real routing hiccups were …

1. Manchester, we are not portaging the canal tow paths around/under Canal Street ever again, figuring out how to get our large heavy boat & kit around/over some of the obstructions took an awful lot of doing, we had to avoid broken glass and it smelt like an open sewer throughout – next time we’ll portage Manchester at street level (we’ll have to look at the maps to sort out how), we don’t care if it takes four times longer, it’ll be worth it,  although we strongly suspect we’ll be faster at road level and a lot safer too.
2. The vanishing Anderton Boat Lift … it takes far longer to get to somewhere than you’d think if you miss out whole pages of race notes … need a better way of ensuring the pages have to be read in the right order for our next go, ring bind the guide sheets?.
3. One of the locks after Middlewich was a real puzzle, at first there was no obvious way to portage it, we had to exit right, trolley up and over the bridge to the left, then carefully trolley the boat between a cottage wall and a VW car and on to drop back into the canal.
4. Kidsgrove Spiral … we were not going to attempt that staircase with our boat and kit. Thankfully we’d already sorted our alternate route for there.

Race Notes etc:

Support Crew – essential and when you have them treasure them, both we and Graham (K2 all the way) ran the race as close to unsupported as the race rules allow. We had the advantage/disadvantage that we could carry all we needed for the whole race in our Canadian but at a weight penalty for doing so. Plan your stops in advance, work out estimated timings for the relay change/checkpoints, make sure your support crew have sheets and phone in times for the checkpoints so they can check how you are doing and where you are and adjust meeting times accordingly. Detailed road plans for the support crew do help. We slipped up on this at Marple and had a pleasant unplanned rest stop there while we waited for our trolley to arrive. Decide what you want to pick up and lose at each meet with your crew but be prepared to phone through changes if/as required.

Our pre-planned stops …

1. Marple top lock, pick up our DIY (ex-B&Q sack truck) trolley, 5 miles out.
2. Olde No3 Pub, Little Bollington, 33.63 miles, (food, water and equipment stop) … if we’d have been a little faster we might have made this stop at Grappenhall instead, 40miles (or both)
3. Kidsgrove Spiral, 75.75miles, (food, water and equipment stop) drop off trolley.
4. Bosley bottom lock, 85.5miles, collect trolley to run up past locks, drop it off again at the top lock.
5. Finish, 97.25miles.

Food & Drink – essential but what do you take/need. We took loads … big butty boxes of sandwiches, flasks of coffee, packets of sweets, 2L pop bottles filled with still (tap) water, Robinson’s squash, re-hydration salt tablets, flasks of soup, flapjack and about 3 boxes of Jordan’s crunchy bars.

We couldn’t face the sandwiches (at least I couldn’t) and didn’t touch the coffee or soup till we got to the Olde No 3 stop. We got to there on about 2L of squash each and the flapjack. At the Olde No 3 I drank 2 mugs of soup and we replenished our water bottles, 2L water + squash + 2 rehydration tablets. The Manchester portages had proven that we needed to lose any unnecessary weight, so of carried sustenance only the sweets, crunchy bars & water journeyed onwards and our flasks, sandwiches, etc were all left behind.

Water was replenished at Kidsgrove and again at Bosley Locks … we drank sooo much on the way round, did we really sweat/breathe it all out?

Safety – essential, PFDs, mobile phones, painters, throw-line, head torches, hand torches (inc wind-up, so not battery reliant), radio, whistles, safety knives (boat with ropes), warm clothes, change of clothes, towel, waterproofs, survival bag, boat buoyancy bags (not needed as it’ll float by itself), bailer, sponge, glow stick (if fall in at night), first aid kit.

Portage – We could not have done this without our “Song of the Paddle” forum inspired B&Q sack truck trolley.

We trolleyed our canoe the right way up, that way we could leave all our kit in it, one end is lifted and the trolley pushed into place with the wheels directly below the central yoke and the trolley handles pointing forwards. Bungie cords were used to link the trolley front handles to either side of the front seat and the straps fastened up and around the central yoke. It worked really well and if it started crabbing we just lifted the boat and the elastics self centred the trolley again, “simples tch tch”. We shortened the strap part way through the race as it was far too long, not a good move as it then frayed badly from the cut and we left/dropped one of our bungies somewhere in Manchester, thankfully we had 2 spares but we finished the portages by just attaching the trolley handles to the front seat and it still worked really well.

The next improvement to the trolley will be an all elasticated fastening system … with bungies permanently fixed to the trolley … it’ll be faster to fasten to the boat and the bits shouldn’t get lost too.

Our SotP inspired canoe trolley

Race Day(s) … Daze … whatever.

Helen (Ralph’s wife) drove us to the Miner’s Arms near Bridge 18 in good time despite the closure of the Leek/Macc Road at Fool’s Nook. I’d left my BW key behind so we rang Ian to ask him to collect it on his way to Marple with the trolley. We unloaded all our kit, prepared the boat and met up with Rosemary, Maureen and Andrew of MADCC. We said our trolley was meeting us at Marple and that was OKed, we were thoroughly scrutinized and found to be deficient in the glow stick department. We bought one and were allowed to proceed to the start. If we’d have known we’d have to carry our weighty beast that far and then lift it over a “kissing” gate to get to the canal (had help for this bit, many thanks) we have had our trolley with us from the start.

8:00 AM – We start in pole position, are we good or what? … actually what, this means we are predicted to be the slowest (got that just about right), still pole position feels really good. Familiar paddling territory this and we land at the 5 mile point, Marple Junction at 9:17AM, a shade under 4mph pace. We take our canoe out of the water and phone Ian (with our trolley) to find where they are, he couldn’t find the junction and he’s about to run up the locks from where he could find near the bottom of the series. We have a pleasant rest, a drink, phone our time to our support crew and Ian arrives with the trolley and a present of a tray of flapjack (what a lovely man) … we fix the boat to the trolley and we are off down to Marple bottom lock. Thankfully a phone call to Kerrian (MADCC) on Friday night had convinced me that we needed to keep our trolley with us for the run into Manchester, thanks Kerrian, we wouldn’t have got round but for that.

We plough on and get past the portages at Hyde Bank and Woodley tunnels with good pace to land at Dunkinfield Junction (Portland Basin), 13 miles done, at 11:35AM, we are still ahead of 3.5mph schedule by 7 minutes at this stage. We moor at the side just past the bridge and meet up with Deborah (K1, solo, all the way) and the lovely helpful gent who we met nearly everywhere in the early stages and had taken to be a race marshal but he was really Deborah’s support team. It’s here that we discover that natural functions are nearly impossible if you are wearing “wet suit” shorts.

Dunkinfield Junction, photo taken on a practice paddle.

Deborah departed in fine style and we follow seeing her gradually pull away and disappear from our view.

Fairfield Junction is at 15.88 miles, this marks “the end of known waters” as far as we are concerned and proceed into unknown territory. Clayton locks were OK but we were really glad of our trolley, one of the other C2s passed us on this portage, coo that looks really light, you can almost see through it. The trolley is doing really well, without it we’d already be sunk … and on towards Manchester. The Ashton Canal closure was fun, a high climb out of the boat onto a jetty, pull the boat up and out then up and over railings, helped by another teams support here – many thanks, then down a series of steps before we stopped to attach the trolley. Trolley across a rough surfaced car park, along the side of a main road where the Council (or whoever) had thoughtfully placed wooden sleepers to prevent motor cycles and the like from using the footpath … it stopped our C2 on a trolley too … we didn’t have registration plates (does the BCU plate count?) but our vehicle really slowed down the traffic till we could regain the footpath and head down the next left turn back towards the canal. A short distance on and we reached the one bit of the trip that I really wish to forget, the tow path portages around Canal Street, just don’t go there, it smells and if you fell and cut yourself I hate to think what you might catch, we had some very awkward bits to try and get our boat over, around or through here too, we’ll portage this part of Manchester at road level in future.

I took a short and very jerky head cam video of our put in and paddle from Castlefield Junction here are still photos taken from the footage …

The well stocked race boat arrives on the trolley

2 young gents in a K2 overtake us here

Our boat de-trolleyed

The trolley back in the boat

… and we are off again

We found out later that Deborah had retired at Marsland, that’s a shame as things got far, far better after Manchester and she’d have been more than welcome to tag along with us, into and through the night, if she could stand our slower pace that is. Around Marsland Bridge Stuart West went past in his K1, he seemed effortless but soooo fast. With a call of “Dah-de-de-de-da-dah!!” the most cheerful competitor we met caught us up and over took in his K1 too, checking we were alright in passing.

Our estimated time for the Old No3 pub was ~17:15PM based on an average of 3.5mph, we phoned our support crew from a mooring, a stretch, food & drink stop, just after Timperley bridge to say we were now an hour behind that schedule. While paddling we discussed everything we could safely leave behind at the pub with the support crew to save weight. On we went and made the Old No 3 Pub, little Bollington, 33.63miles at 18:22PM. A third of the race completed and we’d carried a lot of unnecessary weight to this stage, time to de-bulk a bit. Our average speed was now down to 3.24mph.

Our support crew had drinks at the pub, we didn’t. We drank our soup, drank water + squash and from here on I pinched some of Ralphs rehydration tablets to add to my water. Ralph lost his wet-suit shorts and I changed my socks and wetsuit boots for fresh dry ones, Ralph lost his kayaking gloves with the request that they be dried for Kidsgrove and collected his spare pair …. I didn’t have a spare pair, oops, my gloves were wet (sweat), my finger pads were wrinkly like prunes and beginning to blister, I paddled on from here without gloves, my gloves velcroed to the mid seat to hopefully dry en-route.

We left the Old No 3 at 18:45PM and from here we had some fun as we gradually started to overhaul a narrowboat. As we approached he accelerated and disappeared. We sighted him again and crept closer until the power went on again and he escaped. The sun was in our eyes for part of this stretch which wasn’t pleasant but we saw a little owl, herons, swallows and bats. As the sun lowered in the sky it was a magic time to be paddling, we were still doing well and looking forward to our well earned pints at the Tunnel Top pub half way through the 1mile + portage over the forthcoming tunnel.

We reached Preston Brook tunnel at about 22:20PM still just an hour behind 3.5mph schedule and pulled in behind the narrow boat that we’d played cat & mouse with for so long. “Are you the two who’ve been chasing me since Manchester” we were asked and having admitted this to be the case he asked what we were doing, when we said, he asked if we’d like a tow through the tunnel … would we? … well, we aren’t paddling, so it’s portage (of a sort) … we’d miss the pints at the Tunnel Top … but this really sounds like fun … hmmm … what should we do?

Entrance to the Preston Brook tunnel

the pub that we missed (oops) at Tunnel Top

In a powered boat you can enter the tunnel between 30 and 40 minutes past the hour giving you between 20-30minutes for the transit before boats are allowed to enter from the south end on the hour to ten minutes past.

Our new best friend searched about to find a headlight, battery and jump lead combination that functioned and set up his illumination for the tunnel run. We tied on to the back of his boat with our painter and we all counted down the seconds to half past ten and we were off. This was the highlight of our trip, a white water run through the tunnel with lots of corrective steering at both ends of our boat. Two thirds of the way through the headlamp failed, the last third of the run being illuminated by his wife with a torch at the front of the boat and with the sides of the narrow boat being illuminated by Ralph’s and my head torches from the canoe behind … and did we slow down at all … not at all … wheeeeeee!

We left our new friend mooring at the end of the tunnel and pulled out to portage the stop lock at ~ 23:00PM.

We paddled on to Saltersford tunnel, pulled out our boat and fastened it on the trolley for the haul over the tunnels. Saltersford went well and also the middle 500m stretch of the canal. The portage over Barnton started well, going up the British Waterways lane and then we managed to lift our boat over the “pinch” gate and on to the footpath beyond, over the top and down to the second “pinch” gate. We lifted the boat up onto our shoulders and the wheels wouldn’t clear the gate so we lifted over head height and progressed forwards, my PDF stopped me from squeezing through the gate and I yelled for Ralph to stop, Ralph was attacked by the pathside tree and couldn’t stop, the boat moved forwards, sliding through my hands, I tried to catch the grab loop to slow its fall as it left my hands but missed and the boat, trolley and contents fell 6-7ft to the ground … BANG!

It says a lot that both boat and trolley were still usable after that treatment.

The start of the Saltersford portage

Part way over

The middle canal portage

The start of the Barnton tunnel portage

The first “pinch” gate

The second “pinch” gate, where we nearly broke both the boat & trolley

The put-in

We hoped that by now our support crew were fast asleep to be fresh to meet us at Kidsgrove in the morning. Radio crackling was heard from a white van opposite the Barnton put-in we called across, the light went on and we identified ourselves as Boat 18 to the Raynet operator, we asked if we were now last and were told no, Boat 6 was now approaching Preston Brook tunnel. We paddled on into the dark, the highlights here, in no particular order were the smell of the baking bread from Roberts bakery, paddling through the chemical plant (ICI?), the tarmac plant (? … it smelled slightly of tar/creosote). In the low light conditions my eyes started playing tricks, trees became modern art style buildings, a distant moored narrow boat became a bridge to paddle towards and through … at least until we were closer.

As morning broke we were both nodding off, we discovered that we are caffeine addicts, I need 3 coffees in the morning to start me up and without it we were both flagging, sugary sweets didn’t help, if anything they made the sleepy feeling even worse. We were saved by a packet of chocolate raisins, a handful woke you up for about 15mins and then you needed another dose. The weight of our boat and the portages from Middlewich on really took their toll, we called base for urgent coffee supplies to be available at Kidsgrove and to warn of a massive delay in our arrival. We met up at BW HQ at Red Bull, used the magic BW key to access the facilities, two big mugs of coffee didn’t touch the sides, Ralph gained his now dry gloves and we portaged on to the Kidsgrove Spiral.

… and our route at Kidsgrove Spiral is … (image credit – Google Maps)

… and at canal level …

Now back on familiar territory we switched canals at Bridge 134, left our trolley and nearly everything else with our support crew and paddled on to Bosley locks. At the bottom lock we met Diana and Neville (plus wife & dog) with the trolley at 13:05. Portage up the locks, use the wonderful BW key to the facilities at Bosley top, rang Rosemary to say our ETA at the finish would now be ~ 17:00PM, we’d slipped 5Hrs behind 3.5mph schedule and 3Hrs behind schedule for our stated 30Hr target … and on we go.

We’ve paddled these parts of the Macc canal many times, but we are sure we found new sections were being added as we paddled on into Sunday afternoon, the sun beat down and swarms of small solid flies hit us like BB pellets if we ventured into the shade of the canal bank trees. There were so many vehicles at the Fool’s Nook road closure that we decided it wasn’t a roadworks after all, they’d made the road into a works vehicle park instead.

The Bridge numbers gradually reduced as we counted them down to the finish.

Two bridges from home we pulled over to the right bank to allow a narrow boat to transit the bridge and on exit they (deliberately?) steered into us pushing us and our boat up and into the brambles. Grumbling to ourselves we pressed on to the finish where we were met and congratulated by Rosemary and John of MADCC, so a little after 4 Hrs 8mins and 40seconds later than the official prize giving, we were presented with our very own Cheshire Ring Race mugs, what a lovely and thoughtful thing to do. In the elation of finishing the incident at Bridge 20 was forgotten.

The last few yards

Two pints of cold Theakstons bitter at the Miner’s Arms hardly touched the sides, the promised strange psychedelic effects of post CRR beer failed to materialise, largely due we think to the fact that we drank immense amounts of water throughout the trip and so we weren’t dehydrated at the end.

Aches and niggles – I’ve blisters on 3 of the 5 digits of my right hand, and may lose the fingernail of my little finger, it’ll teach me not to catch my finger between the gunwale and my paddle when I’m j-stroking. My left elbow ached from about half way and both our backs hurt too. The 200mg Neurofen tablet tally to get us round … Mike 3, Ralph 2. Have we hurt since we finished … not at all … and each time I look at my bright yellow CRR mug I’m on a high again that beats any tablets.

As Helen drove us home both Ralph and I looked at the speedometer at the same time, we seemed to be approaching a 40mph speed camera way too fast … and our speed, about 27mph … we were still attuned to the pace of the longest paddle.

We were asked if we knew how Raynet missed us at Preston Brook Tunnel and Valley Farm. Preston Brook tunnel is easy, he wasn’t in the tunnel and we were (naughty but great fun). Valley Farm, not a clue, we were in a big red boat with bright yellow day-glo  diamonds at both ends and wearing head torches so we should be pretty difficult to miss. Boat 6 were students, they retired at, or to, the Tunnel Top pub to drink (our) beers … grrr … well done lads!

Congratulations and thanks to all at MADCC who put so much effort into making this event possible, safe (at least as safe as is humanly possible) and thoroughly enjoyable. Thanks also to Raynet for their night time cover, even if we did manage to squeeze under the radar a time or two in our stealth boat.

Congratulations also to all our fellow competitors, however far/fast you managed to go, I really hope you managed to have at least some of the fun that we did on our circuit.

Ralph insisted on standing up in the boat after we finished, I was hoping he didn’t tip us both in and on being given the official time we said “Oh, that doesn’t count, it was just the practice lap, can we do our timed lap now please?”

We think we’ve invented a new sport, Expedition marathon canoe racing. Why the “longest paddle”?, Andrew (the race organiser) thinks we may have the longest ever recorded, all the way around, finish time in the CRR

Mike Fennell and Ralph Rhodes – Boat 18.

Cheshire Ring Race, 2011, C2 all the way, Bronze, 33Hrs, 8mins, 40secs. Average speed 2.934mph.