New Zealand Paddle Ferns: Hull to Thury Harcourt

A long trip from England saw us arrive in Canterbury on Monday evening. We stayed at the Canterbury YHA that had the best power showers we've all seen since leaving home! A big treat from rugby clubroom and kayak club showers!

Tuesday morning we hit the road for a quick trip down to Dover to catch the ferry back to Calais in France.

Tam went a lovely shade of green on the ferry ride over as the ship bounced about all over the show. Docking in France we were ready to hit the road. We all piled into the vehicles and drove off the ferry. Suddenly the van came to an abrupt stop and Gibbo ran to the car and announced that we were one down. We had managed to leave Becks on the ferry!! After we had contained our fits of laughter we got in contact with Becks through cellphone and were able to get her safely back to us!

We had a long (& expensive) trip to Thurry Harcourt going through an unbelievable amount of toll booths. A few of the toll booths cost us 6.90 Euros for each car! We arrived into a picturesque Thurry Harcourt at 8.30pm and dived into the first restaurant we found. It turned out to be AMAZING! They had the most amazing wood fired pizzas! Having sufficiently filled our tummy’s we headed off to discover our accommodation for the week.

While the setting for our little cottage was incredible, the inside was left a lot to be desired. It can only be described as walking around a rather rough student flat! Never the less we made the best of the situation and turned our wee cottage into the Paddle Ferns Love Nest. We were given some Swiss army stretchers complete with handles to lift the wounded, some mattresses and each subsided to the various rooms and called it a night. The following morning we were up at the crack of dawn...well maybe not, try 8am! Gibbo set us up with a bit of a plan of attack and we were off for the next couple of days training.

Thursday night the catwalk was out as Project Runway took place. Tam in her secrecy had been out and brought some accessories and with some white t-shirts we had picked up along the way we were randomly spilt into pairs and had to design an outfit we would wear at the worlds after party. Each pair had one hour to use the t-shirts and the accessories to make their masterpiece. Some extremely entertaining pieces were created. Each person was allowed one vote, but not allowed to vote for themselves. It ended up being a tight contest between Team Gibbo & Tania verses Team Tam & Megan. With points tied, the last vote was counted and the winner was.........Gibbo and Tania. Gibbo and Tans designed a stunning white suit jacket for Gibbo. It included beautiful duct taped cufflinks, a red paper handkerchief in his duck taped pocket and a tall top hat made with white paper. A very entertaining evening with lots and lots of laughs!