Without a paddle: Warwick graduates canoe across Europe

Ten countries. 3000 miles. 146 days. These are merely the statistics of an amazing adventure that two Warwick graduates undertook during the summer – by canoe.

James Warner-Smith and Nathan Wilkins canoed all the way from Nantes, France, to Istanbul; the Atlantic to the Black Sea, and were the first in the world to do so. They may have capsized, had all their gear stolen, been arrested, and James even missed his graduation ceremony, but despite a few pitfalls, it was a fantastic adventure that neither of them will ever forget.

After canoeing around Canada during his gap year, James got thinking about the possibilities Europe offered. “I wanted to do something more original,” he said, “and then found that Europe had never been crossed before, so from there I started looking more and more at the rivers of Europe and how they all link up and if it was possible.”

Nathan had in fact never camped before, nor had he ever been in a canoe. “We spent maybe ten days practising in Leamington Spa, on the River Leam,” said James. “It was 146 days of paddling, and before that he had never been canoeing, never been camping before… you don’t need experience to do it, you don’t need to be professional.”

The highlights for them were the random kindnesses of strangers: “The best bit about it is meeting friendly people, and the further away from home you get the more helpful people are.” While the pair were in Bulgaria they got lost and, in asking for directions, were offered dinner and a place to stay by a friendly local.

However, the trip did not go entirely according to plan. “We had a couple of really tough days,” James admitted, recalling a few bad days in Serbia with high winds and a current manipulated by a nearby hydroelectric dam. “We had to stop for a while and hope the waves passed. We nearly got capsized, that was the scariest bit.”

The duo also had some pretty near misses. At one point the river they were traversing in Bulgaria became too choppy to be safe, so the two landed and headed to the nearest village. James noticed a line of uniformed men in the distance. Then they came across scattered cut out targets. Dotted with bullet-holes.

“We did not say anything, we just quietly got everything and started moving so quickly.” However, they were picked up in the village after exiting the firing range. “They took us back to this navy base, took us inside the base, and kept us there. I went to the toilet with a guy with a gun following me, and I think we were there for seven hours.”

Amazingly, the boys were not particularly scared. “It was crazy, but at the same time by that point we had had to cross a lot of borders and we had got stopped by customs people and border police quite a lot, so we had dealt with a lot of police by that stage.”

“When we were walking with these guys back to the headquarters we could hear the guns firing on the firing range.”

They also had some pretty bad luck – arriving in Tours by pure coincidence they happened to arrive on the same day that the Tour de France ended, and were keen to catch the end of it. Hiding their canoes and bags amongst bushes and trees in a nearby field, taking the valuables with them, they spent the day in the city.

Although they caught the tail end of the Tour, their luck was not to last on their return. “Our bags had been opened and everything had been taken.” The canoe was untouched, but the sleeping bags and tents were not.

They were left with only one sleeping bag and tent between them, and it was too late at night to replace anything. “We were worried that someone was going to come back and take the canoe.” So, they took it in turns alternating sleep every two hours. “We did that all night.”

They then had to canoe into the city come morning. “In one day we just went around on buses to every sports shop we could find replacing all the stuff that was stolen.”

They also filed a police report but, with very little French between them, they had to resort to e-mailing and Facebooking all friends that could speak French.

Thankfully, Nathan and James had had the foresight to take a note of contacts living in every country they were crossing that could speak the local language, and this precaution was incredibly useful on this occasion.

Part of the reason the trip was possible was due to the Lord Rootes Memorial Fund at Warwick. The Fund awards financial support to Warwick students wishing to pursue creative, challenging projects of personal development and research. Grants range from £100 to £3,000 to support a huge variety of projects.

Other projects last year alone included kayaking from England to Finland, producing a photographic report of the effects of the 2004 tsunami on Sri Lanka and studying great white sharks off South African coast.

“My advice would be for anyone who wants to do it to start getting a proposal well in advance, not to have an idea and leave it to the fund to kind of see your idea and think it is good. It is up to you to show them it’s good.” Several drafts and re-drafts later, “we ended up with something that was really professional.”

They supplemented their proposal with endorsements from other adventurers, including Mark Beaumont, who holds the world record for the fastest circumnavigation of the globe by bicycle.
James also contacted author Robert Twigger for endorsement, who was the first to complete a 2,000-mile journey across North West Canada by canoe since 1793.

With these endorsements and a fully researched proposal, they were awarded the full amount of financial support for their endeavour.

For James and Nathan, it made up about 75% of the money they spent. Without it, they would have had an incredible amount of fundraising to do.

“We would not have found the equivalent of what they gave us in terms of commercial sponsorship, the money they gave us was pretty vital.”

Applications must be submitted in the first week of the autumn term, for Christmas/Easter projects, or early January for summer projects, including a project proposal, a full financial plan and an academic reference.