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Doesn't time fly ? It had been a whole year since we had powered - well, ok then, limped - our way down the mighty River Wye. The searing pain, the muscle spasms, the sunburn and the awful food were all starting to fade from memory, and with some hot summer weather once more upon us, we started planning another canoe trip.

The big decision was 'where do we go this time'? Another of Nathan's school trips had been on the River Trent and he had vague recollections of it being quite nice so we started looking for information. I found a cracking guide on the internet (Click here to view it), written by a chap called Jim Thornton who had recorded one of his trips along 100 miles of that very river. We wanted to keep to the format the worked so well on our previous trip, abandoning the car at the finish point and taking everything we needed with us in the boats. Jim was kind enough to reply to my Email inquiring about riverside camping prospects, and we decided that the Trent was the river for us.

Having got that bit out of the way, it was time to sort out the things to take. One of the great things about being a bloke and planning this kind of trip is shopping for the 'essential' toys and gadgets that we'd need. The top priority for me was not having to rely on last year's troublesome tent. I opted for a lightweight one-man model which packs away into a tiny bag and took about five minutes to assemble - well, that's how long it took to put up in the office on the night I bought it, but to be fair I had nowhere to hammer in the pegs without making a mess of the carpet. I also got a rather nifty electronic compass, not quite as much fun as a personal GPS navigation device would have been, but it was considerably cheaper, and it does have a stopwatch and alarm clock built in. I reasoned that surely one of those things had to come in handy, even if we were going to be on a river and it was all but impossible to get lost. An extra gas burner was on my shopping list so that we could brew up some tea and heat up food at the same time, as was a laminator so that we could waterproof our guide notes.

When Nathan bought his canoes, the shop only had one of the deluxe model of the Carolina boats in stock. This had waterproof bulkheads set into the front and back of the boat which can be used for dry storage, accessed through removable rubber seals on the top of the canoe. It also had foam thigh pads for comfort and extra elastic shock-cording behind the seat for securing documents, packets of biscuits or anything else we might need to get at in a hurry. Nathan had purchased a kit which would allow him to modify the second boat to a similar specification, but we hadn't got round to fitting it until now.

The first job was to cut out the holes which would give access to storage areas once the bulkheads were fitted. Thirty minutes work with a rotary cutter and some sandpaper and we had two professional looking apertures. Next we had to mark out, drill the holes, then fit the shock-cord fittings and thigh-pads, all of which took a little time but went without a hitch.

Now all that remained was to push the waterproof bulkheads into position then glue them into place with a special waterproof mastic. It was somewhere around this point at which we realised that the bulkheads that Nathan had been supplied with were not the correct bulkheads for his model of canoe. The rear one was of a fairly similar shape and size, and we were able to make it fit with a little bit of trimming and a good deal of brute force. The front panel was a different story altogether - it was nothing like the shape of the front of the boat and was far larger than it should have been. After a fair bit of head scratching we ended up making a template out of cardboard, then hacking the panel down to size with a large wood saw. Still, we got there eventually, and once the sealant had gone in, the whole thing looked every bit as convincing as the deluxe model that had come from the manufacturers.

One year on, the overweight heroes pick up their paddles for another go.