An amateur boater has recalled the time he and his schoolfriend almost drowned in the River Great Ouse - and said it was sheer luck they survived.
On Sunday, the bodies of two female canoeists were pulled from the water near Kempston, Bedfordshire.
In light of the tragedy, Mark Chamberlain told the Mirror when he was 12 he made a foolish mistake and feared he would suffer the same fate.
The now-53-year-old plasterer still lives just a few miles from the spot and said he's never ventured near the weir again while out canoeing.
During the school holidays in around 1983, the two young lads had taken Mark's inflatable three-man dinghy out to paddle from Bromham down to Kempston.
They'd packed sandwiches for the roughly three or four mile journey.
It was a similar time of year to now, and the weir was flooded.
When they got near they took the boat out of the water and walked on foot, before relaunching back in further downstream.
However, they carelessly then decided to paddle back up to it to see what it looked like in full force.
But getting just a few metres away meant their little dinghy was pulled in.
It flooded, though stayed afloat, but all their items, including their sandwiches and shoes, floated off.
"When it is in flood, the water comes down the weir and it goes down under the water and then it comes back in a circular motion, so it’s like a tumbler effect and we got too close and it pulled us in," Mark explained.
"We couldn’t get out at all. I can’t tell you how fierce the water is there.
"It’s very very strong, I’ve never experienced anything like it before or since.
"The water that was taking the boat was pulling from one side of the river to the other so it was going from left to right, and the boat was going left to right."
Mark said his friend jumped out of the boat, thinking he'd jump clear of the current and swim downstream to safety.
"It sucked him straight back in and under," he said.
"I jumped in after him but kept one arm in the boat. Grabbed hold of him and pulled him to the surface so we were both hanging onto the rubber dinghy.
"The force of the water, when I was hanging onto the side of the boat, actually sucked my socks off my feet.
"We were terrified, we thought our time was up, honestly."
Mark said it was "pure luck" that a fisherman was around 50 metres downstream and had spotted them earlier in their dinghy.
When he noticed their shoes and sandwiches float by he realised they were in trouble and dashed back up to the weir.
Using a long landing net pole, he waited until the boat was pulled towards the wall on the left of the weir and Mark's friend grabbed it.
He was pulled out of the current far enough downstream so he could swim and get out of the water.
"Then when it came left again far enough, nearer to the wall, I grabbed the landing net and the same thing again," said Mark.
"If he hadn’t been there or had that pole I honestly don’t think I would be here today."
Mark went on to say: "Nobody would get out of there, it’s way beyond anything swimming out of it. Once you’re stuck in the current, that’s it you’ve had it.
"We were very lucky to get out of there. I’m a very good swimmer, I’ve done my lifesaving badges, there was no way out of there, absolutely no way.
"If that fisherman hadn’t been there, we’d have had to wait there all day hanging on or we’d have sadly gone the same way as these two women.
"I would imagine they were on the lower part of the weir, as we were, got too close for it and there’s that washing machine effect."
Recalling what happened after their ordeal - which Mark estimates lasted around 10 minutes - he said they climbed out on the bank "soaked from head to foot".
They walked to his friend's house around a quarter of a mile away and "got a bit of a b******ing for being so stupid".
"When you’re 12 you don’t have any sense of danger," Mark said.
"You don’t have the same fear or common sense.
"We didn’t mean to get into the weir, we were just rowing up near to it. It was like boys will be boys - there’s some danger, better go towards it."
He said he and his friend - also a plasterer - still reminisce about their lucky escape.
