A pair of great blue herons glided silently along the riverbank as my friend Ian and I paddled our tandem kayak one bright, chilly morning earlier this week. Moments later we passed an egret standing still as a statue at the water’s edge, waiting to feast on minnows that darted below the surface, and not far away I counted more than 20 cormorants perched in a row on a shoal, preening and drying their wings.

Ian and I were not exploring a pristine waterway far from the madding crowd, but the region’s busiest, most industrialized river, the Thames. In fact we made those avian sightings only minutes after shoving off from the public launch site at Howard T. Brown Memorial Park in downtown Norwich, reinforcing my view that you don’t have to stray too far from home to enjoy outdoor activities.

While it’s true that during our nearly 25-mile journey from Norwich to New London and back, which took more than four hours, we paddled past abandoned mills, a power plant, chemical factory and the Submarine Base, it’s also true that we didn’t have to drive five hours to northern New England. I confess to feeling guilty about my expanding carbon footprint whenever I head for the distant waters of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont for recreation.

In the past couple of weeks Ian and I have been seeing quite a bit of the Thames as we trained for The Mayor’s Cup, a 28-or-so-mile kayak race around Manhattan scheduled this Sunday, Oct. 18. Assuming foul weather doesn’t wash away the event as it did last year, and assuming Ian and I don’t get swept away while navigating the notoriously treacherous waters of Hell’s Gate, or get run over by the Staten Island Ferry, I’ll follow up with a report on our experience next week.

Just as The Thames River will never be mistaken for Maine’s Penobscot or Kennebec Rivers, it also bears little resemblance to the East, Harlem or Hudson Rivers, on which we will be paddling in New York, but for our purposes, to get in a paddling workout close to home, it is ideal.

There are several convenient launch sites, and even in strong winds and changing tides conditions rarely become so challenging you have to worry about dumping. We found the public ramp below the Gold Star Memorial Bridge in New London best because it is located roughly midway between our homes, and because the 130-foot-tall twin spans serve as a beacon of sorts on the return legs of our out-and-back excursions.

This time of year boat traffic is considerably reduced from peak summer months, but we nonetheless have had to change our course a few times to avoid crossing the channel in front of fishing boats and to steer clear of the Coast Guard Academy sailing team.

Our biggest hurdle has been slipping past the sub base, which juts out from its eastern bank in Groton. When Ian and I have timed our workouts heading north from the Gold Star I’ve been tempted to cut the tangent pretty close, and once inadvertently strayed within the comfort zone of a Navy patrol boat.

I knew I was in trouble when I heard an engine behind me – at least it wasn’t automatic weapon fire from a machine gun mounted on the bow – and sure enough, a metallic warning crackled over a loudspeaker: “Attention kayakers: Get over to the west side of the river!” Ian and I hastily complied.

The sub base is among the many landmarks we’ve passed on our regular workouts, and I learned to gauge the quality of our effort by how long it would take us to pass them – the NRG Energy power plant in Montville, the Harvard and Yale boathouses and Dow Chemical factory in Gales Ferry, the Preston incinerator smokestack, and the Mohegan–Pequot Bridge. The fastest we could cover the 8.5-mle distance between the Gold Star and Mohegan-Pequot bridges was 81 minutes and 21 seconds, which works out to about 6.4 mph, but that was in a crosswind and following tide. Against a headwind and/or tide it has taken us almost an hour and a half.

Of course, you don’t have to be training for a kayak race to appreciate the Thames.

Earlier this year participants wrapped up a series of more than four-dozen Source to Sea environmental-education events with a paddle downriver to the mouth at Long Island Sound.

The program was organized by The Last Green Valley, a Danielson-based nonprofit, to raise awareness and appreciation for the Thames River watershed from its headwaters near Sturbridge, Mass., to its mouth.

It’s nice to see others value this resource that so many of us in southeastern Connecticut take for granted.

As much as I hate to admit it, environmentalists must recognize that not all rivers serve only as nature preserves or as playgrounds for outdoor enthusiasts. In reality they also exist as transportation corridors as well as sites for factories, marinas, restaurants and other commercial enterprises.

The most realistic goal involving rivers where the banks already are developed is to ensure such uses are carried out with minimal impact.

From my perspective the Thames is far from pristine, but it serves many purposes. You just have to go with the flow.