The Wacky Races

The 4th Ravenglass Seaquest

To some, this might be the stuff of nightmares: imagine you're running in wellie boots. Wellie boots full of water. You're also running through thick, estuarine mud the colour of chocolate. And as you run, the mud clings more and more, and the checkpoint seems to be getting farther away. Was this a bad dream? No. It was the Ravenglass Seaquest.

As races go, it couldn't be more wacky. Checkpoints dotted about in three different forked limbs of an estuary. Some of them might be floating, some on land. Some in mud, and some, it turns out, completely submerged under water...And the idea is to clip the most checkpoints in under three hours of kayaking as the tide shifts land to sea, and back again. In some ways, it couldn't be more intellectual. Which estuary first? Do you make use of the tidal jets as they force upstream, or do you plough right on?

Everything had gone beautifully to plan. We were ahead of a loose schedule and managed to clip most of the checkpoints with a few minutes to spare. We hadn't even had a flicker of a domestic, which can be an occupational hazard when racing in a team with your partner, and at the end, we'd had a great time.

Preferring the quiet patio of the pub round the back to the jostle of over a hundred kayakers on the sea front, we enjoyed a quiet pint in the sun after this fast- paced epic. On our way back to the car, we stopped for a moment at the prize giving on the front just as we were announced the winners of the mixed pairs event. We couldn't have been more surprised, and it did feel like a bit of a dream. But a good one.