No effort required.....

If you think this picture looks grey, and bleak, and cold...... well, yes!

But at least - after yesterday's unrelenting downpour - our boatman here could travel for miles at great speed with only a little steering required from the paddles.   Coming back would be a different matter! 

For some reason his skill made me think of Madog of the Dead Boat a regular character in the Ellis Peters' Cadfael Novels. He is a Welsh fisherman and ferry man, well versed in every turn of the River, and thus finds its dead as well serving the living.   Luckily, no such gruesomeness today.