The great Mother's Day paddle

The other weekend, on Mother’s Day, to show that both I and our spawn appreciate the effort that the wonderful woman in our life goes to for us, I decided that we should head off to Lake Gregoire for a picnic. The timing was just right as the weather was turning and we’d purchased some inflatable kayaks online and they arrived on the Friday before, just in time for a maiden voyage.

So with the car packed to the rafters, stuffed with kayaks and life vests and picnic stuff we made our way to the lake with the weather looking okish, if not brilliant. After a little detour due to yours truly taking a turn that we weren’t supposed to (yes there’s only two and I got it wrong!) we arrived to find that despite the weather having started to come good, the park where we’d planned our days event was still closed! Undeterred, we headed down to the boat ramp to see if there was somewhere there that we could have the picnic, but other than the carpark, there really wasn’t a friendly place for us.

We also noted at that point that much of the lake was actually still frozen. It meant that falling out of the boat was going to be considerably less attractive than it might be in high summer, but then falling out hadn’t actually been in the plans anyway (well except perhaps for Michael).

We trundled off in search of a better spot and went into the actual camping grounds and found a site there where we could light a fire and cook some lunch. And at that point, it rained; of course. Fortunately it didn’t last too long and Matt, Bron and their tribe arrived as well. A little white spirit does wonders for assisting with a wet wood fire and soon enough we were cooking our chops and hotdogs over the open fire.



With lunch completed and the weather looking to take something more of a nasty turn, we scrambled the gear back into the car and headed back to the boat ramp to launch the kayaks.

As I stood in the carpark pumping up the first of the kayaks, I couldn’t help but notice that the weather had turned significantly from the first view of the lake that we’d had on our arrival. But with an expectant wife (no not in that way!) and excited kids, there was going to be no way that we were leaving without the kayaks getting wet. Once I’d finished the first one, we carried it down to the lake (which was suddenly extremely windblown and choppy) so that I could leave Caroline to it and pump up the second one in some relative peace.



I made a quick trip back to see how Caroline and Michael were getting on before I set about inflating the second one. I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw that they had the kayak pointed into the wind, paddling, but going nowhere. Once they coordinated things a little better they managed to get away, but it quickly became clear that there was going to be no point in putting the second kayak in the water. And so after some 10 minutes and probably as many metres of travel, the intrepid adventurers returned to the shore so that we could pack up the kayak. And learn that once we’d had it out, it wasn’t going to fit back in the roof pod that we’d brought it in. Fortunately Matt and Bron, with less kids and a bigger car were able to bring it home for us.

Now if only the weather had held, we could have been paddling on this:



Instead of being frustrated by this: