Question's in the title 
A couple of my English friends (plus one boyfriend) are over here this week housesitting for a friend of the family, and yesterday they invited me to go kayaking with them on the River Orne. We hired two 2-person kayaks for the afternoon, starting at midday - they took us by road to the starting point, and from there we had until 7pm to return the kayaks to their base at Clecy. They provided water-tight barrels for our lunches etc. which strapped onto the back. I shared with my buddy Hazel who is as loopy as I am and we had a really brilliant time! Aside from talking crap all afternoon there was also a lot of laughter, mainly based on our appalling paddling skills and the various pickles we got ourselves into We had five weirs to go down plus some patches of rough water, we weren't very good at steering (partly because we were always laughing too hard) and spent most of the time crashing into the bank, scraping under low tree branches and coming dangerously close to tipping over. In one patch of shallow water we actually managed to ground our kayak completely, resulting in me saying to Hazel "well obviously you'll have to get out and push" ("why me?" she asked, for which I did not actually have a legitimate answer, but it's ok cos she had already got out by then.) The other two were treating it like some kind of competition and kept zooming off ahead, giving Hazel and I the opportunity to entertain ourselves even further - every time they stopped to wait for us and turned around to look, we stopped paddling and put our feet up on the sides making it quite obvious we had no intention of trying to catch up
The scenery in that area is absolutely stunning (it is an area known as Suisse Normande because the hills make it look a bit like Switzerland) and being out on the water in the sunshine was such a peaceful and perfect way to enjoy it. Being in such good company was just an added bonus. Unfortunately no photos from the river as I didn't want to risk taking my camera on the water (must buy a cheap compact for these situations!) so you will just have to believe me when I say it was beautiful It was really nice to do something different for a change, as even my day off usually involves horsey stuff. So when was the last time you did something completely different to your usual activities?
A couple of my English friends (plus one boyfriend) are over here this week housesitting for a friend of the family, and yesterday they invited me to go kayaking with them on the River Orne. We hired two 2-person kayaks for the afternoon, starting at midday - they took us by road to the starting point, and from there we had until 7pm to return the kayaks to their base at Clecy. They provided water-tight barrels for our lunches etc. which strapped onto the back. I shared with my buddy Hazel who is as loopy as I am and we had a really brilliant time! Aside from talking crap all afternoon there was also a lot of laughter, mainly based on our appalling paddling skills and the various pickles we got ourselves into We had five weirs to go down plus some patches of rough water, we weren't very good at steering (partly because we were always laughing too hard) and spent most of the time crashing into the bank, scraping under low tree branches and coming dangerously close to tipping over. In one patch of shallow water we actually managed to ground our kayak completely, resulting in me saying to Hazel "well obviously you'll have to get out and push" ("why me?" she asked, for which I did not actually have a legitimate answer, but it's ok cos she had already got out by then.) The other two were treating it like some kind of competition and kept zooming off ahead, giving Hazel and I the opportunity to entertain ourselves even further - every time they stopped to wait for us and turned around to look, we stopped paddling and put our feet up on the sides making it quite obvious we had no intention of trying to catch up The scenery in that area is absolutely stunning (it is an area known as Suisse Normande because the hills make it look a bit like Switzerland) and being out on the water in the sunshine was such a peaceful and perfect way to enjoy it. Being in such good company was just an added bonus. Unfortunately no photos from the river as I didn't want to risk taking my camera on the water (must buy a cheap compact for these situations!) so you will just have to believe me when I say it was beautiful
It was really nice to do something different for a change, as even my day off usually involves horsey stuff. So when was the last time you did something completely different to your usual activities?
