While England has ample kayaking opportunities along its popular beaches and rugged chalky clifflines, enduring coves, bays and estuaries, I must admit, I wasn’t taken to any expeditions on the Thames due to its busy waterways. My adventures in kayaking usually find me around the warm summer coasts of the Isle of Wight where the sea water bumps up against my vessel as I ride headlong against the backwash of passing boats and the the ebb and flow of daily tides, so river kayaking is certainly a new atmosphere for me where the trick is inevitably less in manoeuvring waves over open water and more about navigating tight corridors and closely packed river traffic.
However, the trip was booked and before I knew it, on a mild if a little breezy May day, I headed to what turned out to be a quintessentially pretty English town, Henley-on-Thames, a settlement with some gnarly history and a host of famous residents. The town itself is thought to have been established around the late 1100s by a certain Henry II who bought land to establish a settlement and it enjoyed and endured the colourful events of the following centuries, from the scourge of the Black Plague that wiped out the town’s some 60% population, to an upsurge in the 17th and 18th centuries in the manufacture of glass and malt, while establishing itself as a central trade post for corn and wool as well as timber for London.
Outside its limits, we were to deploy the kayaks, courtesy of Henley Canoe Hire and head downriver where the water meanders eastbound, eventually finding its way through the shadow of Parliament, the Eye and the ultra modern towers of Canary Wharf further east.
Once in the boats, we were allowed two hours on the river and here’s how it went.
The rain largely held off as sparse clouds ambled across the stretch of midday blue. We traversed the mildly busy waterways both down and then upriver, passing at once into green wooded countryside where in places you would find yourself half beneath alcoves of weeping willows drooping balefully over the water’s edge. The river split apart as a number of islets thrust into view including the banks of Rod Ayot where listing trees sit on their tapered edges. I could spot the roofs of simple chalets visible in the Islet’s recesses before we cleared the island and ventured further. Marsh Lock blocked our path – a long pillared bridge spanning diagonally across the river.
We turned upstream with the late noon sun catching the water, we drifted along the edges of Henley, its 500 year old St Mary’s Church tower with its quadruple turrets rising up amid the handsome buildings of the town before we paddled under the distinctive 18th century five-arched bridge, a hail of greetings and grumbling vehicles echoing beneath the brickwork. Whichever way we paddled we had to keep an eye out for the barges and speedboats that pass through (yeah, there’s a lot of money here). But whether the warm May sun stuck to our backs or receded behind a buttress of low cloud making me bristle with the cold breeze, we had a blast and nobody of my party tumbled overboard.
Afterwards, as the sun disappeared over Henley’s rooftops, the group of us sat along the waters’ edge. We were almost inclined to buy dinner in the riverside pub set a stones’ throw from the five-arched bridge and eat with the water throthing underneath the boardwalk but the menu was too overpriced for our late 20-something post-student incomes so we chilled on one of the benches and played with a local’s curious dog – that was good enough for us.
I would definitely recommend at least a couple hours on this particular trip. We didn’t end up journeying far due to time constraints but there are options to make an afternoon out of it and paddle further afield if you fancy a longer adventure.