Being a business that operates seven days a week, we do like to let our hair down just occasionally and that’s exactly what we did on Wednesday. With a lot of planning by our Social Secretary, Claire, all fifteen of the Myakka team descended on the Kennet and Avon canal in Bradford on Avon.
Not long after a quick lesson from Wayne the boat engineer, we set sail on the canal and we were soon chugging along. Rich our Warehouse Manger was in charge of captaining the boat, complete with pirate patch he truly looked the part. Our first challenge arrived when we reached the lock… the gates of which, without access to reverse gear to stop the barge, we viewed in very close detail! After calling out Wayne for a short tutorial in finding reverse, we navigated through the lock and got back on the open waters once again with an extra vessel to add to our fleet… the Canadian Kayak powered by Alexandra and Simon.
By this point Rich had the hang if the barge and we were chugging along nicely. As there are 15 of us in the team and only 10 were allowed on the barge at a time some of us decided to take the opportunity to go on a nice stroll. We soon ran into a problem as the towpath abruptly came to an end with Georgie and Heather finding themselves in a field of cows and in need of rescue by the two in the kayak. Shortly after we arrived at our destination, moored up and made the walk to reach the pub for a spot of lunch where some of the beer-drinking stragglers decided to join us!
After we were fed, watered and all too full to move we made our way back to the canal to attempt to turn around and come back the other way. This time the whole team got a chance to captain the barge with varying degrees of success! After a few incidents with the bank and some trees, we made it back to lock navigating through like true professionals before heading back to the Marina to park up and travel home. Georgie was now at the helm and proved the women drivers can park with a near perfect sweep into the Marina and our space, much to the annoyance of the guys who helped in the lock who were having some real issues (in fairness, their barge was about 30ft longer!)
All in all we had a great day with lots of food, drink and laughs. The icing on the cake was meeting Wayne’s pet duck, Boris, in the car park on the way home!
