Rivers of No Return: 1. Clinging to the Wreckage

The River Exe

The Raft (1915) by William James Glackens. Public Domain.

The town I went to school in was famous for two things¹. Juvenile “delinquency” and poor mental health. The former was arguably more an exaggeration than a fact, and the latter was the product of small town whispers and not history books. (Allegedly, there was inbreeding among workers who came from the north of England in the 18th century to work in factories here.)

As if it wasn’t hard enough being a teenager attending school in a town like this, in the summer of 1980, my twin brother and a few of our friends decided to go on something called “the Exe Struggle." Together, we’d build our own raft and float it down the river from the rowdy little town in question to the county capital, Exeter, where I was born. If you finished the Exe Struggle, you got a certificate or something.

It was a crazy idea. But at age 18, crazy was fun. Besides, it was our last chance to do this together, and we were desperate to get out of that town.

So we got to work. No manuals were easily available, this being a long time before the internet, so we basically built something we’d imagined out of ‘Robinson Crusoe’ or ‘Moonfleet’. Except that we were using plastic drums that no doubt contained some hazardous chemicals that were harmful to humans, animals, and plants alike. It was the early 1980s; it was Devon. People didn’t think much about those things or didn't care. 

We built our raft in a yard near the river, well upstream of where the race would be held, in the winding, narrow valley that connected the rugged moors of Exmoor with the rich farmland towards Exeter. This was our patch. The land was full of clay and rushes, and the rivers or streams were swift and cool. This was the hinterland of Exmoor, the land of Lorna Doone and Tarka the Otter, a land visited by poets such as Shelley and Coleridge (“Kubla Khan” was written about 20 miles away). On rare days out, we’d visit Tarr Steps, an ancient clapper bridge believed to date back to 1000 BCE. We knew this land.

In her 1948 story, “A View of Exmoor”, published in the New Yorker, Sylvia Townsend Warner described ‘ten foot hedges’ and ‘a falling meadow, a pillowy middle distance of woodland and beyond that, pure and cold and unimpassioned, the silhouette of the moor’ - which is a pretty good description of the place. I also urge you to read

Tom Cox

‘s amazing essay about a walk on Exmoor: 

Notes From Exmoor

Anyway, we lashed the thing together and got it over to the starting point on the day of the race thanks to my father’s farm trailer, determined not only to finish but to win!  Of course, many others had similar ideas. Most of them were mature adults with years of experience doing this. Some even wanted to carry the whole thing off in style, something alien to our venture. We were on an adventure; confident, grimly determined, and basically clueless. 

The day began well. The summer had been dry, so the river’s currents were gentle. It was a Saturday at the end of August. People were in a holiday mood, and the atmosphere gestured towards carnival. And, though focused and determined in our teenage earnestness, even we joined in the friendly banter and the gentle splashing of rival crews.

Then we were off. 

Everything began smoothly. I almost wrote swimmingly, but no, we stayed on board, somehow craft intact, and we went merrily along with the current, paddling our way around the river bends. It wasn’t exactly this:

The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,

Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold;²

But we were moving. The landscape we went through was familiar. Riverside meadows, Friesian or Holstein cows quietly chewing their cud, vibrant hedgerows, a miscellany of farmhouses that ranged from subdued new bungalows to ancient manor houses, red-soiled river banks and large solitary oaks. We’d see these places driving to Exeter or along the lower Exe Valley to play rugby or cricket against local schools. But it took on a different quality, stretched out there in the late summer sun; seen from the water, it conjured a kind of pastoral idyll of the kind summed up by the 1960s TV show I remember from my childhood, ‘Tales from the Riverbank’. 

Things continued to progress well, and although we found ourselves nowhere near the lead, we felt pleased we’d got this far intact, even enjoying the slightly sneering remarks we got from the pilots of more elaborate craft. We were in the race!

We were virtually within shouting distance of the end of the course when we got to the weir. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to pass through a weir on a home-made raft, but it’s basically not a good idea. It's a bit like shooting rapids in a balsawood canoe. Or something like that.

At first, the problem was that we were becalmed, so we paddled with tired arms across the still surface of the pool upstream of the laddered weir. Then, we had to lug the craft down the ladder of the weir into the faster-moving waters below.

Having negotiated this part in one piece, we were feeling pretty pleased.

Then we began to feel our little raft being sucked into the ever faster and still shallow current. The pull of the currents and undertow - I've since heard weirs referred to as “drowning machines” - was too much for our frail vessel.

One of the four flotation drums escaped its tethers and floated to the right - to starboard. On the port side, another drum performed a similar manoeuvre. The remaining structure, following its own interpretation of the laws of physics, somehow flipped over. We were all in the water.

A weir (photographer unknown)

By now, we were on the outskirts of Exeter, in an area that was often flooded. And after exceptionally heavy rainfall, the rising waters would even close the nearby railway line. It was a line we knew well, as it was the only rail link between Devon and the distant metropolis of London. After Exeter, heading south then west, passengers could enjoy extraordinary views of the beautiful Exe estuary, a haven for wading birds, and on the eastern side, the beginning of the Jurassic coast heading up to Dorset. I’ve been lucky enough to travel that route countless times. To the south, it also takes you along the shore at Dawlish and along the lovely Teign Estuary. It’s a journey full of very special memories for me, as readers of my earlier post, The Whitsun Weddings, may recall. 

Anyway, there we were, swimming in the now-deepening pool, clutching what remained of our raft and propelling it to the nearby finishing line with various versions of a one-pawed doggy paddle. And that is how we found ourselves, bruised and subdued, and edging towards the waiting crowds. 

‘Clinging to the Wreckage’ is the title of a volume of autobiography by John Mortimer, creator of the wonderful Horace Rumpole and also husband to the writer Penelope Mortimer.

In chapter 1 of Clinging to the Wreckage, John Mortimer tells the story of how he came up with the title of his book. It happened when he found himself talking to an old mariner.

The mariner: “I made up my mind, when I bought my first boat, never to learn to swim.” 

Mortimer: “Why was that?” 

The mariner: “When you’re in a spot of trouble, if you can swim, you try to strike out for the shore. You invariably drown. As I can’t swim I cling to the wreckage and they send a helicopter out for me. That’s my tip, if you ever find yourself in trouble, cling to the wreckage!”

Mortimer then laconically remarks, “It was advice that I thought I’d been taking for most of my life.”

And it’s also just what we did. With jeers from the spectators mingling with the cheers of encouragement, we passed the finishing line, still clinging to the wreckage. To this day, I don’t know whether we had officially completed the course or whether swimming while clutching a tangled structure of wood and plastic across the line even qualified as finishing at all. I don’t have a certificate to prove it, certainly. But we’d travelled a long way. Except for our pride, we were unharmed. And for a glorious afternoon, we had left that little, rowdy town far behind.

1. This is the first of a planned series of posts about rivers I have struggled down or which have otherwise impacted my peripatetic life.

2. Antony and Cleopatra, Act II, Scene II