Canoeing further up the river Soar....and got shot in the back by a 12-bore...

Too close for comfort.....be aware of ricocheting pellets...

Most fantastic pub and hospitality, The Boat in, Barrow Upon Soar http://www.boathousebarrow.co.uk/

Map of the route we took, courtesy of http://www.canoedaysout.com/trip/1065

Need to add one more skull....where the clay pigeon shooters roam free....

Preparation for an interesting day out

Found a great blog about a trip on the river Soar north of Leicester. I read it, studied it, and was prepared for a great trip. I recommend you reading it.

It starts from Barrow upon Soar, goes up via the Grand Union Canal to Loughborough, and then back down again via the river Soar.

vital statistics

10 miles total distance, but it took us 5 hours, including breaks, and an unscheduled stop to call the police and check out my back...

My co-pilot for the day was Jonathan, who was a great guy to have with me on this trip.

The first half - nice and easy

We started off from the Boat Inn in Barrow Upon Soar, where the landlord is used to people using his site to launch boats, so a great welcome start.

The best thing of the first half of the journey was that, unlike last week's trip through Leicester, this time there is not one lock to go through. Well...there is one lock, but that is open this time of the year. The first, and only 2 locks are on the other side of Loughborough, so it is quite nice to focus on peddling, rather than getting in and out of the canoe and walking with >30kg (with all the food and drink) for several tens of meters.

The sound of silence?

The surroundings are quite tranquil, and there are lots of birds flying about. The whole morning we can hear shots being fired in the distance. This is hunting countryside, so I don't think any more off it....The only slight snag was the high number of anglers in the way, which you felt you had to do a careful male mating ritual with to ensure they would let you go past without flinging fish food at you. We stopped past the Boat Inn in Loughborough for an apple and a rest.

Stretchy rudder cables are not desirable

The guy lines I use to steer the rudder have too much slack in them, and this means I have to continually adjust them. This I need to change. I have some wound metal cables, like the ones on your push bike, and I will go and test those out shortly.

Getting shot in the back

We passed the two locks on the other side of Loughborough, and are ready to turn right onto the river Soar. We notice straight away that we are going upstream now, so we brace ourselves for 8km of good peddling.

We go round a few bends, near Stanford upon Soar, and we can see lots of cars and jeeps in a field and the continuing sound of double barrel shotguns being fired is getting closer.

We then see the familiar silhouette of clay pigeon throwers in the field. So at least that mystery is solved. Just lots of people having fun propelling lead at clay discs....I say to Jonathan: Let's just check that there are no red flags up, or if there is a barricade, indicating a no-go area. But as there is none, we keep happily going on our way.

We can see in the field parallel to the water that there is a small group shooting in the same direction as we are peddling. So as long as they shoot in line with us, it should be ok....

Not much later, Jonathan says that it looks like as if some of the shot is hitting the water in front of the canoe, splash splash splash.....I don't think any off it, and keep peddling. Moments later, the same splashing sound, except this time, it is ricocheting not just on the water, but also on the back of our canoe, and one lead pellet hits me on the back just above my right shoulder.

It stings.

I shout: SHOT!!!!

I urge Jonathan that we should get the hell out of there.

We peddle like mad, and get round the next bend out of harms way.

Inspecting the damage

We stop a short while later at a convenient landing place so we can inspect the damage and decide on what we need to do. Fortunately, the pellet must have lost most of its velocity, as it did not go through my non-kevlar coated t-shirt, and Jonathan says, there is only a small red mark visible. So no damage, just shock. What shall we do? say nothing, keep going? What if we had come the other way? the shot could have hit us straight in the face, and possibly cause more serious injury. At the end of the day, pellets should not be able to get in a public place. This wont do

Calling the police

So we ring the Leicestershire police on their non-emergency number: 0116-2222222. (what a great number to remember!). The initial response is of course quite scary: "You say you have been shot in the back?" Yes, but no damage was done. Ricochet pellets. They should not have gotten into the water. Could you go and have a word with the shooting club please. They provide me with an incident number and we go on our way.

I have travelled all over the world. In some hostile places, but never ever expected to have this incident in "my back yard"....well...it just shows....

Low water causing lots of little delays

We keep going, as we still have quite an upstream trek in front of us back to Barrow. but every mile or so there are weirs in the water. Now normally these should not have been a problem, but because we have not had much rain for over a month, we are grounding the boat near the weirs, and the flow is quite hard. So we have to get out of the boat, up to our (mostly knees) in cold water, and pull the canoe over the weir. This happens quite a few times. There is one particularly nasty one underneath a bridge, where the water just down stream of it goes through a bottle neck so flows quite fast....If only we had gone the other way....We look if there is an alternative route overland, but it seems that the straight route is the best option. We get out, and this time the water is a bit deeper and wade through the worst of the fast flowing stream, pulling and pushing the canoe. It feels like a little big victory when we finally pull the canoe over the 30cm drop of the weir into more peaceful water.

The final challenge

The one but final challenge are obstructions underneath a railway bridge. Here we have to carefully navigate the canoe between sunken wooden pillars, whilst not getting too close to the massive steel support pillars, where the water is flowing very fast round them. This was actually not too hard in the end, but it looked quite bad initially.

The final hurdle is where the River Soar meets the canal. Here there is a big 3m drop that we can navigate around, so this is the only time we have to get out of the canoe and walk for about 30m through bushes to get back onto the canal. Fortunately I brought carabiners and 2 slings which makes pulling the canoe out, walking and launching a lot easier.

Back where we started

at 15:00 we get back to the public house, and check again with the land lady that it is alright to use their landing place. I get a friendly reply from her: "Yeah...no worries" (I imagined she was Australian, but probably just local).

We pack everything up, surprisingly little water in the canoe, and head back home for some well deserved supper.

From here it is a gentle final kilometer back to the public house.

What should I do next?

I call the police to follow up on this afternoon's events, and they say they are going to have "a word" with the shooting club....is this sufficient? What should I do next? How can I be sure this won't happen next time I go past there? let me know your thoughts....