Canoe cavalcade

John Drummond and James Treadgold of the Reading Canoe Club had led from the start at Devizes Wharf and at Old Windsor their lead over favourites Henry and Richard Hendron of Richmond Canoe Club was over 20 minutes.

But the London crew chipped away at the Berkshire team's lead until, in the last stretch along the River Thames, they overhauled them to win by just over a minute. The Hendron brothers' time was 18 hours 34 minutes and 50 seconds compared to Drummond and Treadgold's 18:35:55.

Former and current Dauntsey's School pupils showed well in the results of the race.

Guin Batten, who left Dauntsey's in 1986, is better known as an Olympic rower. The four-woman sculls crew that took the silver in Sydney in 2000 included her and her sister Miriam, also ex-Dauntsey's.

Now Guin, 35, has changed her style of boat and with colleague Louise Carey entered the DW in the veteran female class. The duo won the female doubles and veteran female doubles classes, but they took nearly three minutes off the veteran female record which has stood since 1993. And the most remarkable thing about their performance is that they only took up paddling at the end of last year.

Seeing the canoeists off at the start of the race was 95-year-old Ollie Brown, the Devizes Scoutmaster who has been called the Father of the DW.

Mr Brown was the man who took up the challenge, in 1948, of bettering the 51 hours that a team from Pewsey had taken to paddle from the village to Christchurch, on the south coast the previous year.

But his troop of Rover Scouts, with their homebuilt, wooden canoes, did not have the right sort of boats to undertake the challenge. It was not until the alternative route along the Kennet and Avon Canal to the Thames and then on to Westminster Bridge was suggested that they were able to take to the water. Aiming to do the route in under 100 hours, they completed it in 80 and won £20 towards the group's canoeing funds.

Mr Brown remembered: "We had one derelict canoe which we renovated and the second one we made from scratch. These canoes nowadays you can pick up with one hand. Ours weighed half a hundredweight with all the food and camping kit we had to carry with us."

Little had changed by the early 1960s when Bob O'Keefe was a competitor.

Mr O'Keefe, who was taking part this year as part of a veterans' squad assembled by London doctor Bernard Watkin, said: "When I first took part, there were great lengths of the canal where there was no water at all, and other stretches where you had to get out and pull the boat through reeds."

A record time was set in 1979 by Greenham and Cornish in a time of 15 hours 34 minutes and 12 seconds. Tony Alan-Williams, another of Dr Watkin's veterans, says the record is unlikely to be broken.

He said: "No one would be allowed to race under the conditions that prevailed in that year. The river was running so high that, if it was like that now, the race would be cancelled."

Ex-Marine Mr Alan-Williams has taken part in seven DWs, coming second in 1969, first in 1973 and 1974, and fourth about ten years ago. He was due to complete the final stage of Dr Watkin's relay team effort.

Dr Watkin, who is hoping to raise thousands of pounds for the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, also enlisted the help of patient and friend, Sheila Farebrother, the mother of Elton John. It was Mrs Farebrother's first involvement in canoeing. She said: "Elton has always hated the water and won't even come on the little cruiser we have moored near our house on the Thames. His sport has always been tennis, and football. He loves all kinds of sport and is always phoning me up to find out the latest results. I am so impressed with all these kids going off this morning. You wouldn't catch me in one of those canoes."

Mrs Farebrother waved off Dr Watkin's veterans when husband-and-wife team, Alistair and Marriane Wilson pulled away from the Wharf on the first leg of the challenge.

Marlborough College and Dauntsey's School were once again well represented, Marlborough entering five crews and Dauntsey's six.

Adam Reid, the Dauntsey's teacher who has coached the school's junior crews over the last few years, took first place in the endeavour class with his paddling mate Pete Thomas in a time of 18:59:02. Parents Derrick and Joanna Trevelyan finished in 23:32:26, while sisters Jennie and Laura Page were close behind in 23:52:57.

Kate Burbeck, daughter of Wiltshire Chief Constable Elizabeth Neville, and her stepfather, Nick Cox, who did the DW in 1991, joined forces to complete the race in aid of the Wiltshire and Swindon Community Foundation and the Wiltshire Bobby Van Trust. They came fourth in the junior/veteran class in a time of 21:28:57.

They had over £7,000 in sponsorship pledges. Mr Cox said: "We would like to thank everyone who has contributed, but especially Vodafone and S&T Body Repairs in Trowbridge who have been extraordinarily generous."

Hats off also to the men of the Gurkhas who used the DW as part of an amazing three-part endurance test known as Operation Phikkarchaina.