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Kayaking - the art of using one’s bum to balance a plastic egg cup that has a mind of its own, in turbulent, dangerous water. “Roll those wrists as you paddle and you’ll keep a straight line,” the instructor had said. No problem simulating it on dry land before he let us loose in the Wye, but on the water it was as if we were a bunch of mental defectives who had found a hole in the loony-bin fence. We zigzagged and circled randomly in every direction but the one we were trying to take, managing a straight line only when a dangerous object - another canoe or the submerged log we’d been warned to stay away from - loomed in front.

Splash! One bloke was in, having aimed straight for the log in spite of the instructor’s screams;

“Stop John, back paddle, back paddle! Oh Shit!”

Idiot, I thought, as I watched the capsized bloke flapping about trying not to drown.

“Reach down and pull the spray deck loose, you’ll slide right out!” yelled the instructor, his voice frayed and stressed, like a mother with a hyperactive but chronically stupid child.

The spray deck is the skirt one wears around one’s waist to stop one getting wet. [It only works when one is above the water.] If one capsizes, and haven’t yet learnt the famous ‘Eskimo Roll’ way of righting the canoe, the spray deck becomes a terrible death-trap enemy that holds one in the canoe as one flails wildly, head under water, until one remembers what the instructor said, and simply pulls the thing, which releases it, and its captive. One then floats to the surface unharmed, wishing the panic hadn’t been quite so pathetic in front of a group of total strangers.

How do I know? Because right after I had mentally cursed the other bloke, I had run straight into another canoe, capsizing both of us.

I had come on this kayak course at the behest of Black Mountain Activities, a Hay-on-Wye company that specializes in various kinds of activity break. The term ‘activity break’ had set all my sensors bleeping full alert. I, of course, am too cool for all that. My mind was resistant. No smooth-talking instructor was going to charm me into actually having fun.

The problem was, after about twenty minutes I was having fun. I learned how to go forward and how to turn the canoe with only a few seconds’ difference between brain, hands and paddles. I had even learned to go backwards and how to stop, as had the others, and the instructor decided we were ready for the first real part of the day - to play ‘it’ with each other in ten-feet deep water, trying to bash each-other’s canoes with our paddles. It’s amazing how quickly one can revert to childlike behaviour: the other twelve idiots and I happily rammed each-other, soaked each other with well-timed splats of the paddle and, of course, fell in. All fear of capsizing had evaporated by the time instructor called us back together and led us off down the Wye.

Never mind, I thought as I paddled alongside my new mates, ‘activity break’ or not, this is brilliant. We spent the rest of the afternoon getting as wet as possible on the small rapids that pop up regularly on the Wye. In spite of all my efforts not to like the instructor (he was so good at everything) I became putty in his hands when he produced his trump card - a wet sponge that one could dip in the water and chuck at the others. No one got upset when they received a sponge full of river-water straight in the mouth. Amazing. The cows in the bank-side meadow looked on as we gadded. I have no idea what they made of it, but we didn’t care.

By the end of the day I found that I could kayak - at least a bit. I could shoot a small rapid. I could stop and turn at speed. I could paddle into the big wave coming off a rapid and hold myself still in the current, notwithstanding the canoe’s bouncing all over the place. Dammit, I had learned a new skill.

‘Activity Break’ nerd I may be, but give me a river and a paddle and I’ll be ready.

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