Bikerafting Christchurch

Bikeraft sailing sounded like a good idea I’d not tried yet, and now in the midst of this summer’s third heatwave, it’s high time to get on the water! Lately I’ve been distracted by other outdoor activities. Today’s 10mph easterly ought to work well across Poole Harbour, followed by the dreary reed-bound slog up the Frome river back to Wareham. So I took a train to Poole, cycled down to Lower Hamworthy shore, folded up the Dohon Mju and unrolled the boat.

I realised later I’d ridden over the impressive but troubled Twin Sails Bridge completed in 2012, but closed for years at a time. I wonder if the two are connected, as in trying to be flash backfired? It’s so called because the lifting bascules or spans are joined diagonally, giving the dramatic appearance of two sails when raised (below; video).

One worry about bikeraft sailing is that until you have a secure set up, ripping along at 10-12kph you don’t want 11 kilos of bouncing bike to deal with or get tangled in. But as things worked out I needn’t have worried. If it was 10mph, I’d forgotten that that’s not enough for a good ride. The problem is, my WindPaddle has narrow operation window. Beyond 15-20mph it gets overloaded and starts swinging from side to side, though it’s possible my wide-mount Transverse Bowsprit idea (below) has fixed this.

I paddled right out into the middle of the channel opposite Arne to get clear of moored sail boats and turned into the wind. The TXL+ moved along under sail, but I was hardly clinging to lines like something out of a Roadrunner cartoon or in Knoydart one time. The weight of the Mju is more or less equivalent to an overnight camping load, so another 5mph of wind would have been ideal. One side benefit: with the sail down and paddling, the sheet keeps the briny splash off the bike.

Motorboats were bombing around towing water skiers and other contraptions which made me nervous, but this part of the Harbour is allocated to such activities. I inched along like a water snail and eventually I knew I’d have to turn southwest and go across the wind where the boat felt even more sluggish and the bike and pulled down sail up front pushed the bow offline.

It was going to be a long old slog to the river entrance, followed by an even longer haul against a dropping neap tide to Wareham. So I sailed across the channel as tight to the SW as possible, then when the sail collapsed, paddled along while a windsurfer up ahead made better progress.

The dropping tide was exposing the silt to either side and soon the navigation poles: red left, green right, converged and guided me towards the otherwise hard to find river entrance where I knew the Frome turned sharply and I’d get a bit more sailing in. Now in a corridor of reeds, I sailed past the windsurfers who’d been met by a tiny inflatable dinghy who’d tow them into Wareham. As the afternoon heat pressed down, it made the thought of my long meandering slog of nearly 4km to Wareham all the more galling.

Left Pill, Right Pill
So at a (non public) sluice jetty I’d noticed before (above), I crawled up a ladder, hauled the boat up and rolled it up. This was right on the Path of Two Rivers. The path is a loop which follows the Frome’s banks and then turns west back to town along the parallel but smaller Piddle. We paddled this once. We also walked the 2RP in autumn and it was fine, but in summer the Frome section had been very overgrown with reeds and nettles.

I was right at the path’s apex; about the same distance back back to Wareham along either river walk. Unfortunately I turned left and took the Frome path which was a really bad idea. Had I turned right, or even just stepped a few metres to the north and climbed over another locked gate, I’d be on the track alongside Swineham Lake where we go swimming twice a week and I’d have arrived in town in just 16 minutes looking fully normal. But even with the OS Map App showing all this on my phone, I chose left, thinking we managed the Frome bank path before.

Even at the best of times the path here is less than a foot wide, uneven and rutted. Too tricky to ride safely. Soon I was pushing through reeds as thick as a jungle, and much worse than I recalled from our summer’s walk. Pushing the bike ahead on its back wheel like a trolley, at one point I recognised the gate leading to Swineham lake and knew the road was right there, just 100 metres away. I walked down off the embankment into what looked like a path through the reeds but suddenly sank down to my knees in mud and swill, with the bike on its hubs. I was lucky to get out with my shoes. OK, forget that idea.
Looking later at Google sat (below), I see the whole Frome path to Wareham is actually an embankment with the river on one side and the dyke in which I’d foundered on the other, all swathed in thick reeds so you can’t see what’s left, right or underfoot.

Never Get Out of the Boat
Back into the reed hell, I pushed on. From the walk we’d done I knew what was coming next: brambles and nettles. Now early-afternoon and probably 30°C again, off the water, the windless river banks were suffocatingly humid and hot.
This utter misery went on for half an hour. Nettles swept across my shins, brambles sawed at my forearms and reeds slapped me in the face, or tripped me up. I got to a cleared and rideable section (below). Rideable, yes, but not well suited to a 2-speed with 20 inch wheels. The Mju is not a stable bike at the best of times, even less so off road with a backpack while trying to gain momentum to steady the front end. Soon enough I hit an unseen hole and was catapulted over the bars, headbutting the track with a thud propelled by the boat on my back. Oy yoy yoy, today was turning into a right old shit show. I got on again but, deflected by something unseen, I nearly went down the reed bank into the river.

By now I was parched and my arms were streaming with sweat and blood from pushing through the brambles. The legs would still be throbbing from stings next morning, but I reassured myself that there’s some therapeutic benefit to mass nettle stings, isn’t there? At one point I passed a nonplussed couple of middle-aged wild swimmers who looked like they’d been caught by the tide and current, grabbed a jetty with a ladder (like me earlier) and now had a long shoeless walk back to town in their swimwear.
Getting back on the bike, determined to reach town sooner for a drink, inevitably one of the many thorns stuck in the rear tyre pushed through under my weight. (By next morning the front tyre was flat too with 3 holes). I should have stayed on the river. What was it Willard said in that film? Never get out of the boat. Abso-lutely god-damn right.

I marched on, visualising the drinks selection at Sainsburys near the quay. One good thing about the Mju is it weighs nothing, and neither does the packraft on my back. Up ahead a woman with a walking stick and her son with a dog walked by, heading the way I’d come.
You know it gets really overgrown in a few hundred metres. I said.
I showed her my arms.

Gosh, that looks frightful! Thomas, this chap says it’s very overgrown up ahead.
I want to go on, said sulky Thomas.
Oh well, maybe you’ll read about us in the papers, she said with a grin.
At least she had a stick to beat her way through.

I reached the much vaunted extended boardwalk which led to the Saxon-era church near the quay with public toilets where I could sluice myself down. I pinched some guest wifi from the pub and before I knew it, geef was there with a bottle of water and the a-c on full blast.
What happened to your head? she asked.
Oh, just the usual.

Bikeraft sailing? More wind needed with a bike, but now at least I knew a good way to dodge the upstream Frome river slog into Wareham when the tide is wrong, on foot or with a bike. Take the right pill. Abso-lutely god-damn right.