I did the canoeing; the canoe overturned.
But if you insist, you can learn to surf (surfincomporta.com), or hire a canoe in the Sado Estuary nature reserve, which is home to dolphins, flamingos and nesting storks.
On the Bure, fortunately, TheCanoeMan has worked with enlightened private landowners willing to provide crucial access to the river bank where "portage" – dragging your canoe over a field to avoid a weir or watermill, for instance – is required.
Travelling by canoe is a revelation, like looking at the world upside down; familiar places appear completely strange.
In a surprisingly witty and charming edition, he revealed that the one record he would keep, if all the others were washed away from his choices, would be William Shatner doing Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, because if forced had to listen to that to the end of his days, it would give motivation to "hollow out my own leg and make a canoe out of it to get off the island".
I peer towards the stage and catch sight of one of my canoe feet connecting sharply with the back of an unsuspecting teenager's head.
With a wobble and a shimmy, I limboed backwards in my canoe, nose brushing against the bridge, to shoot safely out the other side like an ungainly, oversized Poohstick.
When you've rested, you can sail, windsurf and canoe before your first rum punch at the beach bar.
Catch a bus to Beaulieu, where you can rent a canoe and paddle to Puybrun.
TheCanoeMan runs canoe camping trails on the Rivers Bure, Ant and Waveney in Norfolk and Suffolk, with wild camping along the riverside.
Later that afternoon, I pulled my canoe on to the bank alongside a small spruce plantation in the middle of nowhere.
