Getting wet

Two rivers, two minutes from two very different homes. I have found myself unexpectedly submerged in both, but that's about all they have in common.

The Wey

This stretch of the Wey is about 800m long, and two minutes from yesterday's home. There's not that much in the way of river traffic, the odd passing duck perhaps, and the occasional swan. In summer, there are usually a few narrowboats moored along the length we ironically call "the straight", but at the time of the day inhabited by rowers, they're usually stationary and emitting wonderful, promising smells of bacon and eggs. There are only a couple of places wide enough to spin the boat in, but seeing as there's only 800 rowable metres of river, spinning happens every few minutes, anyway. It is rather picturesque, but not much cop for rowing. Not that I was doing much of that, having chosen to spend my leisure time sitting on my posterior on cramped trains. Reading. Getting lardy. Commuting. Not making an awful lot of use of having a river two minutes from home.


Today, I'm living two minutes from here:

The Thames

Miles of river, and (being now located twenty minutes' walk from work) pots of leisure time to row (or, at a pinch, read) in. It's not quite as pretty as the Wey, and smells less inviting, and has greater risk of colliding with misplaced and confused whales, but I'm rather excited about the combination of having proper water to row on and the necessary time to row in.