Hippos on the Wey.

As Covid19 continues to cause havoc for most of us in the world, this last week saw a milestone in my life. I joined the ranks of the furloughed! My wife, the Slimhippo has also been on furlough for some time, so we are both now at home with not a lot to do apart from drive each other crazy!

About 2 weeks ago, I bought myself an inflatable stand up paddleboard, primarily to help me with my swimming coaching, but also to keep me sane, as all my swims have been cancelled this year. I decided to teach myself to paddleboard, and as I had already had a 40 minute introductory session about 5 years ago, the fundamentals came back to me, but I needed practice. On one of my initial outings, whilst slicing through the calm waters of the River Wey, I looked around at the beautiful scenery, and thought, I could get used to this!

When furlough happpened to me and I went out on the river on my first day off (this was my 2nd time out on the River Wey), I thought, how about we (Slimhippo and I) do something different? That book I wrote on endurance swimming had got stuck in my head! So I came up with the mad idea to paddleboard the whole length of the Godalming and Wey navigation – a distance of 19.5 miles. I have never paddleboarded that distance EVER before, and my wife has only kayaked for 18 miles non stop.

When I got home and talked to the Slimhippo, I was surprised at her reaction and subsequent enthusiasm (I was expecting exasperation!) but now here we are with a little over a week to go before you will find the Hippos in the Wey.

As most sporting events this year have been cancelled, and most participants were raising money for their chosen charity, charities in general have been hit very hard with this Covid19. We will be doing this for the charity CAFOD, which is a Catholic charity that supports communities around the world that in crisis (including Zimbabwe and Zambia, which are dear to our hearts) through self sustaining projects, with the aim of helping those in poverty deal with hunger, lack of fresh water, climate change and lately, the challenges of COVID 19. If you’d like more information, see links below about what CAFOD is and what they do. For our challenge, we will be self supporting ourselves, carrying most our provisons with us. Our adventure will start on the 24th June 2020 at Godalming Wharf at about 6am in the morning.

Statistics of the navigation:

• The distance is 19.5 miles in total: the Godalming navigation is 4.5 miles long and the River Wey navigation is 15 miles
• We will be paddling through Guidford town centre and through the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty
• We will need to get our kayak and paddleboard through 16 locks!
• Start time will be 0600hrs at Godalming wharf
• We aim travel at about 4 – 5km an hour…!
• The total time we expect this challenge to take us is between 8 – 10 hours of paddling

So here is what you as the public can do, if you would like to support us!

• Sponsor us at https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/hippos-in-the-wey
• As this is a navigation used by barges in days gone by, there is a towpath along the majority of it where you can join us and walk alongside us. Contact us if you’d like to know where we are – we’ll post on Facebook as we go and check our phones for messages (comment here if you want my phone number).
• If you have a paddleboard or kayak, please come and join us for some of it. The support will be much appreciated!
• Share this with your friends and family and get them to come and join you for a walk. The scenery along the River is pretty stunning.

So if you can, please come out and support us.

For links to find out more about the Wey and godalming navigation please go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wey_and_Godalming_Navigations or http://weyriver.co.uk/theriver/Wey_Navigations_Map.htm

For links on CAFOD and what they do, see https://cafod.org.uk/, or watch https://youtu.be/kzDPkRbTIxY.