Canoeing in France
On holidays in France with my family when I was about 10 years old, we went canoeing on the Ardeche River. There was a 10 minute briefing in french, presumably telling the natives about the many hazards, proper canoeing technique, how to turn yourself over if capsized etc.

Not speaking a word of the language myself and my mum got into our two man/person canoe/kayak (what the hell is the difference anyway?) with absolutely no clue on what to do.

Anyway, we set off paddling down a nice calm, deep river. After about 15 minutes of bouncing of the banks the river started to get shallower, and faster and the currents increasingly stronger. We lost sight of everyone else in the group, thanks for waiting dad!

It was whilst on one of these fasty bits my mum suddenly ducked as we drifted towards the bank, the reason for this was made known to me fractions of a second later as the tree branch my mum had nimbly ducked caught me under the neck.

The currents were so strong that I had no chance of freeing myself - I became pinned between the branch and the back of the holey bit you sit in, slowly choking to death. My life started to flash before me, but being only ten I hadn't boffed anyone by that point to make it remotely interesting (the viewing mostly consisted of lessons peppered with the occassional memory of Ms Matthew's humoungous wobblers jiggling infront of me everytime she bent over to help the kid opposite me with maths).

Unable to do anything but make a gurgling sound, my mum turned round and realised why the canoe had stopped. She doesn't strike you as someone that'd be so cool in a crisis, but she jumped straight out into the river up to her waist and pushed my end of the canoe down so I could slide my head forwards/sideways in an awkward motion to free myself. I can only think the adrenaline surge she must have had saved me from a grisly slow death.

We both then clocked the snapped pointy branch jutting out from the one I had caught myself under that had we drifted two inches further towards the bank would have gone right through my neck making the slow choking seem not a quite so bad way to die.

Mum then hopped back in and we hurtled off through the white water, trying to collect our lost oars on the way. We didn't really have any time to collect our thoughts, and I think that was probably a good thing. But if it wasn't for my mum I'd be brown bread.

Still, the rest of the afternoon turned out not so bad. The Ardeche courses through numerous nudist colonies who take exception to you paddling through their nudey paradise. To show their displeasure they dive in to the calmer waters as close to your canoe as possible and swim under it. This was met with me slapping them on their wrinkly gallic arses with my paddle as they surfaced. It's the simple things that make life worth living :D
( Draconacticus Reject shampoo. Demand real poo!, Fri 20 Aug 2010, 14:15, 2 replies)

I wonder if you would have had better 'death' thoughts if you had of seen the nudists before choking. Maybe a good thing that the horror of wrinkly arse wasn't hanging off that chokey tree branch.
(boozehound is drinking your bar dry, Sat 21 Aug 2010, 9:30, closed)

Nudists
generally don't have the kind of bodies you'd like to see naked.
( Draconacticus Reject shampoo. Demand real poo!, Mon 23 Aug 2010, 13:34, closed)