Soggy Sandwiches

I have had many great memories and stories from the river as I live in the beautiful town of Graignamanagh, where the river barrow flows through. I have been swimming and kayaking in the river from a very young age, thanks to my dad. My dad, sister and I started kayaking a good few years back, I have many wonderful memories and stories from the past 7 years. My dad had an amazing idea to buy a double and a single sit on kayak, this opened a whole new world to my dad but was probably my mams worst nightmare (as my mam wasn’t reared by the water). My favourite story from the past 7 years was the famous ‘Soggy Sandwiches’. It was a particularly hot day in summer and my dad suggested that just him and I load up the double kayak and go on an adventure from Thomastown to Inistioge. We had many stops along the way, from swimming to falling off the kayak and ‘’practicing’’ rescuing. We had reached our picnic destination (how we knew this, was because we were both ravenous and very hangry). We pulled over to a beautiful field full of cows… delighted with ourselves we got comfortable and dad reached for the ‘DRY BAG’ to dish out our lunch. While unwrapping our sandwiches we came to the conclusion this was not a very good ‘DRY BAG’ in fact it was the opposite. The crisps were lovely the little tiny bar was divine but the sandwich, THE GOD DAMN SANDWICH, was soggier than mixed cement. It was disgusting. We had no choice but to eat it as we still had to get to Inistioge. After our lunch disaster we packed up, got back in our kayak and continued down the river on our adventure. Along the way we began to burst into song, and I didn’t realise that dad was such a bad singer, because obviously a swan did not like what he heard and very angrily started coming towards our kayak. We were terrified so all I heard was dad yell ‘PADDLE AS FAST AS YOU CAN’ the swan continued towards us, this time a lot faster. After almost gaining a six pack from paddling so fast we escaped the very unhappy swan and arrived at our destination happy and safe. Once on dry land in the lovely town of Inistioge, we felt we had to treat ourselves after the long haul from Thomastown, so we headed to the local shop to buy ourselves a well-deserved ice-cream. We went back to the river side, ice-cream in hand and sat looking out on the beautiful view of the river in front of us. Although the day was, in some ways, a complete disaster we were very pleased with our journey and we had a great laugh while waiting for our mam to collect us. And so that ends my story of ‘soggy sandwiches’, one of my favourites, and most disgusting, stories from my kayaking adventures. The End