A few weeks ago we had cycled along the tow path of the canal and seen lots of people kayaking. We cycled through Griggstown and saw there was a canoe and kayak rental shop and said we would return.

After a quick google search we also found a rental shop in Princeton so we headed there nice and early and decided to rent 2 double kayaks for 2 hours and Tom went with Stu and Izzy with me. It wasn’t too difficult climbing into the kayaks and the shop was situated on a little inlet so we could have a practice paddle before heading under the bridge to the canal.

Despite not kayaking for a few years it didn’t take long to get going – it isn’t particularly difficult. We went north along the canal.

As it is a canal the water is quite deep and was also rather murky – I wouldn’t have wanted to fall in! Along the banks there were lots of trees with their branches over hanging into the water.

About 15 minutes in, Izzy and I were not paying attention and steered ourselves into a tree. Next thing we knew we had a spider on our kayak!. We tried to get rid of it but every time we knocked it into the water it just jumped back up onto our kayak. Eventually we joined up with Stu and Tom and pushed it onto them – which did not go down well with Tom. In the end the spider was knocked off (and it really was a small spider) and it literally hopped across the water and made it’s way to the bank!

We had to pass under a bridge which was completely full of old cobwebs so Izzy and I paddled very fast. We also spotted the odd turtle sitting on old logs on the banks.

After about an hour we decided it was time to turn back. We arrived back at the rental shop but had a bit of time spare so paddled the other way for a while. Tom spotted a landing place which he wanted to investigate but Izzy over heard him and got there first! This really annoyed him!

A brilliant couple of hours (although Tom, Izzy and Stu got blisters from the paddles) and we will definitely be doing some more kayaking.