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Right… here goes. Originally planned on writing this last weekend but work and sleep got in the way.

It all started with a text. My phone beeps and I am greeted with a message from Kev saying “Do you want to come on a day trip?”, nothing more and possibly less. The next detail is that I’ve to get to his flat for 12 noon. Me and Stu arrive at the flat and the suggestion of heading to a deer park is floated about, Stu decides he doesn’t fancy walking all day so the back up plan is for us to find some pedalos. It’s a good plan. Quick stop at Greggs for some food and donuts and off we went to collect the remainder of our adventuring troop… err I mean Gina. Gina saunters out to the car bearing some toast and pate and then we hit the road.

Now a pause for what will hopefully be a photo of Kev driving:

Yay, it appears to have worked. Anyway onwards we go. The drive started without much incident and the discover of a shop selling “Quality tea and coffee”. Clearly this was too exciting which resulted in me not photographing the clearly upmarket establishment. We put on some tunes to raise our spirits and Gina was troubled by the discovery of the donuts. Fortunately she managed to avoid the sugar demons. We stopped at a layby and took in an awesome view.

Having also had a giggle at the car parked next to us with the slogan “2low4fatchicks” in the rear windscreen we continued our journey south dicing with death at every tight turn and with each passing car.

We finally reached our destination of Moffat. Sadly I once again let us down in the documenting states by missing the “Welcome to Moffat” signs. Sorry. We got ourselves parked up and we were not disappointed. We had found a lake that did appear to have a wee shed in the distance.

The next stage of the mission was to seek funds and supplies after our arduous journey through the rolling Scottish hills. Without a map to guide us we had to rely on the combined orienteering skills of Kev and Stu. This was never going to end well.

Moffat is a town with many appropriately named shops that sell exactly what you would expect. Prime example of this would be “Freshly Made Ice Cream” as was “Moffat Toffee” which Gina decided is actually called Moffat’s Toffats. This was a recurring theme with Gina and shop names, she would later misshear me saying “Moffat Hut” as “Pizza Muff”. Good work.

Anyway, back to the task at hand. We made our way back down to our aquatic adventure emporium and scoped out the competition. It was decided that me and Stu would take the lead and get a row boat for our reconnaissance mission. Camera duties were passed to Gina as arms were needed for rowing. Except they weren’t as I made Stu row first.

I should point out this picture was taken later on once I’d recovered my camera but details on that particular challenge later. While me and Stu were setting sail Gina elected for the age old technique of Myspace posing.

Gina then redeemed herself by actually documenting me being lazy in terms of rowing duties once herself and Kev were on board the SS Swanigan.

About halfway through our epic voyage it was decided that the camera would be passed back to our boat and I’m just glad there are no photos of this process. We had to align our vessels then hope for the best. A short time after this it was my turn to take over rowing duties. This was a worrying process of me moving forward to grab the oars then Stu having to climb over my arms then me struggling to turn myself round so I was facing the correct way without losing the oars in the process.

After navigating our way bast competing swans, kayaks and at one point a freakin’ dragon! we returned to shore to regale each other about our nautical adventure. These stories were accompanied with some much needed liquid refreshments at a nearby tavern.

All that was left to do was to collect some food for our Rumblin’ Tums (sadly this place was closed so we hit up the kebab shop) then make our way back home to civilisation. I like to think we all grew as people but that we will also hold these memories dear for the rest of our lives.