The Naturist

Day Four - Morning started well with a clear blue sky.
With the perfect latte from Richards new coffee machine and dry clothes, not to mention anything else that had got wet on the previous day, carefully oven dried by Kirsten, we said goodbye and jumped in the roadie mobile for our short drive back to Shiplake College boat house.
Today we had decided to attempt the remaining 32 miles in one day.
We set off at 8:00am with the wind in our favour. With all our aches and pains soon forgotten we were in no time at all in Henley where we were greeted by friends and family, in particular Simon’s mum who has suffered from Parkinson’s for the past 35 years…an amazing women.
After a quick bacon & egg sandwich we were back on the river. Like a scene from Chariots of Fire our two athletes powered down the Henley Regatta course in what seemed like a course record time. This would only be true if the Royal Regatta had decided to include a slalom race reminiscent of It’s a Knockout the wrong way down the course. At the end of this moment of self gratification Tony and Simon were ready to take on the final challenge.
Hambleden Lock got our first donation of the day. £2 from the lock keeper brilliantly caught in one hand by Simon….can’t catch a ball for toffee but when hard cash is at stake…!
Somewhere between Hambleden and Hurley we clocked an old pale skinned gentleman on sitting on the river bank in a Rubenesque stylie in just a pair of Speedo’s. Just as we began to turn the next bend he whipped off said speedo’s…..despite expecting something odd our loss of concentration resulted in us colliding with a fallen tree. Was he a lone naturist or just the local magistrate?
Hurley lock saw us getting further donations from other lock goer’s and despite long delay’s getting through we were in Marlow by 12:15pm where we were greeted by Julia & husband and later by family and friends. Before leaving we had a photo shoot with Sir Steve Redgrave who had no objection to wearing one of our PD T-shirts. He didn’t have much to say for a Sir!