The Ross-on-Wye Canoeing Holiday
A Teenage Tale of Water, Wits, and Woeful Romance
One of my fondest school memories is the one-week canoeing holiday I took with Barstable School on the River Wye in Wales. It cost a modest £14—a princely sum in those days—which my mother generously paid. Whether this was out of heartfelt sympathy or a deep desire to get me out of the house for a blessed week of peace, I’ll never truly know. But let’s give her the benefit of the doubt and say it was motherly love
To qualify for the trip, we had to swim 25 yards fully clothed and perform life-saving techniques in the school’s swimming pool. It was less “Baywatch” and more “drowning in denim,” but somehow I passed. I wasn’t exactly a natural in water—more like a floating wardrobe—but I was determined.
On the trip, I made friends with Paddy, a likeable, sporty chap from the year above me, famous for being a cricketing legend in school lore. He once bowled out the headmaster—G.G. Blackhead—on the “first ball” two years running. To put this in perspective: imagine a 6-foot-6 man, fully padded in cricket gear like some Edwardian gladiator, marching solemnly to the crease, only to be immediately sent packing with his stumps scattered like pick-up sticks. It was the cricket equivalent of Floyd Patterson being knocked out in the first 10 seconds by Sonny Liston—twice. For years afterward, Blackhead was referred to (quietly, behind his back) as “The Floyd Patterson of Barstable.”
A Minicab, a Party, and a Rubicon Undisturbed
Years later, I ran into Paddy at a party thrown by my college friend John Barker. At the time, I was running a small minicab business with my brother Stuart near Oxford Street—“Langham Cars”. I arrived in my trusty Cortina, accompanied by one of our phone operators, a pretty Irish girl with long black hair named Sheena. Things almost blossomed between us, but we never quite crossed the Rubicon of romance—though we did circle it several times like lost Romans.
Paddy and I, as often happens, lost touch—life pulling us in different directions.
River Wye, Girls, and a Haystack Blockade
Adding to the excitement of paddling through stunning Welsh scenery was the presence of another school group—an all-girls’ school. For a group of teenage boys, this was like dropping a crate of fireworks into a campfire. I developed a couple of harmless crushes. One girl even wrote me a 32-page “love letter” after the trip—though it read more like a meticulous travel diary than a declaration of undying passion. Less “Romeo and Juliet,” more “Tuesday: had a cheese sandwich. Wednesday: rained.”
She once visited me in Billericay with a friend—who, as fate would have it, was blonde, dainty, and clearly more attractive. Naturally, my adolescent affections redirected themselves with all the loyalty of a weathercock in a gale. We decided to go for a romantic walk to a nearby farm, the idea being to lounge flirtatiously in a haystack like characters from a countryside romance novel. Tragically, my little brother Gavin came along as an uninvited chaperone and steadfastly refused to leave. As haystack dates go, it was a total flop. The only thing that got rolled in the hay was a disgruntled younger sibling.
Of Canoes, Cider, and Censored Literature
The holiday itself was unforgettable. I shared a canoe first with my mate Roger Dunkley and later with Paddy. Dunkley, a future tennis rival who beat me with alarming regularity, was also something of a literary influence. While our English teachers—Mrs. Mulverhill and Mr. Hayhoe—opened our minds to the wonders of John Wyndham, Orwell, and the Bard, it was Dunkley who handed me a copy ofLady Chatterley’s Lover.
That copy had clearly made the rounds. One particular wellthumbed page had been visited so many times it was practically transparent. There it was: the infamous mention of the male organ, printed in forbidden ink! For a pair of teenage boys, this was not just literature—it was contraband treasure.
In between navigating the river, sipping illicit cider, and fumbling our way through early encounters with the opposite sex, the trip was a whirlwind of mild rebellion and growing up. A splashy, hilarious, and thoroughly teenage adventure.
In Conclusion
The memories of building the canoe in Mr. Munson’s woodwork club, and the sun-soaked, cider-splashed days on the River Wye, remain among the brightest of my youth. The friendships, the awkward romances, the cricket analogies, and the longforgotten parties in Essex—they’ve all stuck with me, like wet socks in a leaky canoe. And if I learned anything from that holiday, it’s this: Never underestimate the power of a well-timed bowl, a forbidden book, or an annoying younger brother.
