TWO clerics, the Revd Christina Rees and the Revd Patrick Forbes, have embarked on an 85-mile fundraising journey down the Great Ouse, the fifth-longest river in Britain, which flows from Bedford to King’s Lynn.
The pair, lifelong friends, are paddling a two-seater, inflatable kayak — “seaworthy, but not built for speed” — for up to eight hours a day. The potential five-day challenge, they say, is not just to raise money, but “because the Church of England could use a good news story”.
On Tuesday, just their second day, they described themselves and their support team — Mrs Rees’s husband, Chris, and Mr Forbes’s son, Stephen — as “exhausted but euphoric”. They set off from Bedford on Monday after a canalside blessing from the Bishop of Bedford, the Rt Revd Richard Atkinson.
Mrs Rees spent a decade of her childhood and teenage years on the sailing boat that her parents bought after selling their home and possessions. Mr Forbes, who is 86, was a Merchant Navy Radio Officer, a parish priest, St Albans diocesan communications officer, an information officer at Church House, and then press officer for the Missions to Seamen. He had never paddled a kayak in his life until January, when the pair embarked on serious training. He said that he was not fazed by the “baptism of ice” which he endured when capsizing on his first attempt.
The current will be in their favour, and the river becomes tidal as it nears King’s Lynn, but the 16 locks will necessitate disembarking and “portaging” — carrying the kayak overland. To that end, dead-weight lifting has been part of the training, along with squats and tricep lifts. Peanut-butter energy balls will keep them going, they say.
“How we’ll find it physically or emotionally when we get tired, I don’t know, but we’re determined to finish,” Mrs Rees said. Mr Forbes, who was one of 117 people to walk through the Channel Tunnel before it opened in 1994, is raising money for the Tibbs Dementia Foundation and Mrs Rees for the Li Tim-Oi Foundation, of which she is director. Florence Li Tim-Oi was the first Anglican woman to be ordained. The foundation named after her supports women following a calling to Christian work (News, 8 May 2015).
Speaking from Hollywell on the second night, Mrs Rees described the stretch of river that they had travelled that day. They had seen “four kingfishers, many blue herons, weeping willows trailing their branches, swans with their cygnets. . . In terms of nature, it’s been absolutely exquisite.”
Conversation has alternated with periods of stillness, and Mr Forbes, who was a co-founder of the Holy Fools, has kept them entertained by “singing excerpts of Gilbert and Sullivan and reciting Tom Lehrer poems”. Mrs Rees calls him a trouper. “He’s really weary at the end of the day, but he’s amazing. Here he is, 86 and not given to extreme exercise, and he’s just paddling away.”
At the close of the previous day, she had had aching shoulders, and Tuesday had brought aching wrists, but all the training had stood her in good stead, she said. “I’m hoping at the end that I’ll be a new woman.”
