Into the wilds again

We're heading back downstream into poor connection territory, so there may not be a blog for a couple of days.

I'll use Twitter to log our location.

Lovely Lechlade

We’ve made it to Lechlade for the second time, this time in a 70 footer. Sheila steered today, and swung the boat round the hair pin bends with great aplomb. She demonstrated in so doing that you don’t have to have loads of revs for these big bends, but you do have to pick the line, especially where the inside of the bend has a long tongue of sand and mud running out into the middle.

On the way up, we got presented with a duck egg by one of the lockies; apparently these Welsh Harlequin ducks just turned up at the lock one day, and have been hanging around ever since. What’s more, they are good layers. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with one, smallish duck egg, but I’m sure I’ll think of something.

Other good news is that we’ve been seeing the odd kingfisher from time to time, so the winter hasn’t wiped them out altogether.

As usual, there was plenty of mooring here at Lechlade. It’s another mooring with cows alongside, but unlike the gang at Rushey yesterday, these are quite well behaved, except for a reputation for eating the flowers off the top of your boat. We’re told that the farmer has a daft dog that charges about round them, so they’ve just taken to ignoring all canines.

In addition, we’ve met a couple of boaters we know from other places; I suspect that if you moor at Lechlade for long enough, all the boaters you’ve ever met will turn up. Mind you, at £4 a night, it would be an expensive way of catching up with forgotten friends.

Lechlade has a lot of shops, but most of them sell “antiques”. There is, however, a Londis and a butcher come greengrocer so it’s possible to get most of what you need.

I walked Sally up to the round house at Inglesham this afternoon. It made for a good walk, and it would probably be possible to wind Sanity Again there; the lockie at St Johns told us that another seventy footer got round the other day, but I don’t think it’s worth it. Instead, we’ll wind above Ha’penny Bridge tomorrow, and set off back downstream.

Just a quickie

This is a quick blog as we've got a connection at the moment, but can't be sure how long it's going to last. Yesterday at Bablock Hythe it looked OKish at first, then disappeared for the rest of the day.

Babcock was a brilliant mooring all other respects, nice meadow edge, loads of dog running space and all that, but it looks as if the pub, the Ferry, isn't open these days.

Sally briefly escaped from the boat and had a mad race round the meadow; it seems clear the non-Doberman bit of her is greyhound, from the way she was running (at high speed) for the sheer pleasure of it, then came back looking smug and contented. She'd orbited a large tree in the middle of the field twice, trailing a sonic boom.

Today, we set out to go to Radcot, but it all took longer than expected, so we were very glad to find a mooring above Rushey Lock. It's not marked on any of the guides, but there's a couple of other boats here, and the meadow edge is again well trimmed, with good deep water alongside.

That'll have to do for now; Lechlade tomorrow, probably.

Onto the Upper Thames

One of the entrancing things about the Thames is that its character changes as you move up or downstream, from the metropolitan excitements of the tidal section, through the ostentation of the lower part of the non-tidal bit, to the scenic splendour of the Middle Thames above Reading, and finally to the more intimate joys of the Upper Thames or Isis.

We’re now on that last section, taking a leisurely cruise to the head of navigation. Last night’s mooring at Iffley was everything you could want, including some unusual cattle on the nature reserve alongside:

They are Belted Galloways, famous for being able to graze less nutritious herbage than many another breed, and here being used to provide the traditional, post hay making graze on a classical water meadow.

We’ve had an excellent day’s cruise up to Eynsham Lock and Swinford Toll Bridge. After lunch, we took Sally for her afternoon constitutional. An interpretation board at the lock recommended walking up to the next lock, Pinkhill, and returning by field paths to Eynsham, describing it as 2½ miles, which sounded about right.

I’ve heard of country miles, but this was ridiculous. It took us just on two hours, and we are not slow walkers, even allowing for dog rummaging time. In addition, we had to find our way round the tip that is Oxford Cruisers yard, where the Anglo Welsh boats came from that gave us so much grief on the Oxford Canal a couple of months back, and some of the field paths, though reasonably well way marked, were distinctly overgrown and punctuated by the odd fallen tree.

Never mind, it made for a good walk, though we missed a quicker return to the lock by another field path at the end, instead walking over the toll bridge, which is narrow and has only a cursory provision for pedestrians. In the morning, I plan to try the other route, as an excellent pair of leaflets about the village, available from the lock, promises both a butcher’s and a baker’s.

That’ll mean a comparatively late start by our standards, so we’ll probably only go on as far as Bablock Hythe.

Canine Water Transport

We’ve survived our first day of cruising with a pooch. It’ll take a while to get into a new routine, and to find out what we have to watch out for in terms of unexpected canine behaviour. As it happens, and nothing to do with Sally, the day didn’t go as planned from the outset, but all turned out OK in the end.

With around three hours cruising from Abingdon to Osney, and a target arrival time of 11 o’clock, we’d decided to start the day at six. This would allow Sheila to take Sally for her first thing comfort break whilst I made the tea, then we’d get up and breakfast as usual.

Sally could then have a long walk with Sheila from seven to eight before we started boating for the day. This bit went like a dream. I did some odd jobs around the boat whilst Sheila and Sally were out, then just after eight we set off upstream.

Arriving at Abingdon Lock, it all came unstuck when the lock wouldn’t work. It was on Self Service, of course, and since by now it was around twenty past eight, it wasn’t worth calling the EA helpline, since the lockie would be there at nine.

We hung about, giving the dog a bit of extra exercise, and the lockie and his assistant arrived on the stroke of nine, in the former’s case by walking out of the front door of his cottage by the lock.

When I told him of the problem, he walked up to one of the control plinths, pushed a button and it all functioned perfectly. He made some disparaging remark, and his assistant then worked us through.

Now we may be being paranoid, but, perhaps understandably, the lockies are very suspicious of the introduction of self operation, as they fear for their jobs. The guy at Abingdon is not one of Nature’s little rays of sunshine at the best of times, and I would not be totally surprised if he’d left the lock only half changed over, so that it appeared to be OK, but couldn't be worked by a boater.

Possibly unfair, but there you are. He certainly didn’t apologise for the fact that we’d been kept hanging about for 40 minutes.

Sheila steered up the river, and I spent a fair bit of time with Sally (in her buoyancy aid) in the well deck. She seemed to take to it OK, after some suspicious examination of the water streaming past, and showed little inclination to abandon ship, which is the main thing. We sent her below for the locks, which she didn’t appreciate, but we couldn’t take the risk of her charging about a lockside in a panic.

Time was getting on as we approached Iffley, and it occurred to us that stopping before Osney would be better from the dog walking point of view.

Accordingly, after a very smooth passage up Iffley, we pulled over beyond the first Rowing Club and tied on pins just by the Nature Reserve. When I walked Sally up to Folly Bridge later in the day, our wisdom in so doing was apparent; the moorings opposite Christchurch meadow were chocker, it being a sunny Sunday afternoon in July.

Tomorrow, we’ll amble on up river, stopping somewhere above Oxford.

It's a hot day in Abingdon

It’s been a very good day today, with Sally settling in and us playing with Sheila’s new toy, a 13” MacBook. It’s become very hot again, so it’s quite hard to focus on what to say in this post, especially after taking Sally for an hour’s walk.

I have put up some photos of the Swan Uppers on Flickr, and here’s another, to show that it appears that it’s not necessarily the swans that get treated an an undignified way ;-}

I guess that if you just wanted to take a census of the swans on the Thames, two guys from the RSPB could do it a lot more cost efficiently, but that wouldn’t add to the gaiety of life in the way that this performance does.

For those who are interested, there’s a full account of the history of the tradition here, together with a YouTube link.

I can’t speak too highly of Abingdon’s welcome to boaters, with free five day moorings, an excellent shopping centre and lots of activity to observe whilst loafing on deck. Admittedly, a rowdy party boat went down river just before ten last night, and came back even more rowdily some time later, after we’d retired to our well earned rest, but you can’t have everything, I guess.

Tomorrow, we set off again, carrying on up river, with the plan being to reach Lechlade sometime next week.

To Abingdon, and some Uppers

We've made it to Abingdon on schedule, and Elanor and Sally have made the rendezvous in good order. Clarence is here too, so we've had a couple of natters with her crew already.

Just after they arrived, the Swan Uppers appeared, and I got some photos of them. I'll write about it at length tomorrow, I think, with more photos; haven't got time tonight to sort them properly, so here's one to be going on with.

No, it's not back to front, the flag is!

Now I must get a shower, and cook dinner; chicken tagine tonight.

A damp day's run to Day's.

We had a good meal last night; not the best ever, or even in the last few months, but we were both looking for a traditional steak and chips type meal, and the Boathouse, which overlooks the river by Wallingford Bridge, provided that at a very reasonable price.

It’s a chain pub, but with a decent pint of Brakspear, and cheerful service. We managed to eat outside, only needing to put sweatshirts on over our short sleeves towards the end of our stay, and had the pleasure of ogling Sanity Again on her mooring on the other side throughout.

We’ve done just another short run up river today; Abingdon is really only a day’s boating from Wallingford, but since we don’t want to be there until tomorrow, we’ve come to Day’s Lock instead. Rather than pay for a mooring in the weir stream (they look good, but I’m not sure there's room to wind Sanity Again in there, and I certainly didn’t fancy reversing in), we’ve come on to a meadow mooring a bit further upstream.

Before that, we tried the nearer meadow just on the right above the lock as you come upstream, but Sanity Again’s draft was a bit too much for it. As it is, we’re using the plank for the first time, having got the bow reasonably close, and left the stern a bit further out, so as to be sure of getting away in the morning.

There was a huge herd of cows in the field when we got here, including this big boy:

They’ve ambled off now, not that they were particularly threatening in the first place.

After lunch and a doze in the fresher weather, we went for a wander up and down the Thames Path which runs along here. Sheila got very excited by the appearance of a strange looking duck, which she’s identified as a goosander in eclipse plumage:

The weather has indeed broken, and waterproofs were needed for the steerer this morning, but it’s not been very heavy; a few thundery showers, basically, with, as I say, the virtue of a much fresher feel to the air.

It might even be possible to get a decent night’s sleep tonight. In addition, I've tweaked up the stern gland again; Sheila was woken by the bilge pump running last night, which is always a bit alarming.

Wonderful Wallingford

Today is our wedding anniversary; 39 years ago, it was persisting down in Aberdeen, and people told us by way of consolation that it meant “money in the marriage”. Turns out it means a great big boat in the marriage, but I’m fine with that.

We’re going out for a meal tonight, so had planned to eat on board as usual yesterday. This plan was thoroughly rearranged by Edmond and Brigitte of Anna, who suggested we come for a drink with them and Simon from Josephine. Both these are real Dutch barges, one (Anna) having been built in 1927, and the other a brand new Piper version.

One thing led to another, and we had a splendid evening in the John Barleycorn, talking boating and computers, mostly. After a couple of pints, Edmond suggested we have some food there, so we did that, and very good it was too.

As a result, there are now two double portions of liver casserole in the fridge to look forward to, but not tonight.

We made an earlyish start today, getting away at eight, and working up Goring and Cleeve Locks with a nice brother and sister pair on a small narrowboat whose name I did not spot.

There’s a good water point above Cleeve, so with the tank full, we plodded gently up the beautiful reach to Wallingford, arriving just before eleven to find the new moorings deserted.

The lido in the park alongside is doing great business, it being school holidays, and the weather continuing fine.

Sheila’s new MacBook arrived at Elanor’s this morning, hooray. I’d tried to buy it from the BT on-line shop, who had one cheap, but they mucked up debiting my credit card by not responding to a cross check from the card issuer, and by the time I’d nominated an alternate card, it was out of stock.

Instead, I went back to Apple, who turned the order round in 24 hours; it’s worth paying list price to get such effective service.

We've had a great day here, shopping and buying some second hand books in Oxfam who have one of their seriously large boaters' libraries in the town.

We’ll potter up to Abingdon over the next two days, in order to rendezvous with Elanor there on Friday. We’re looking after Sally, her dog, for a week, whilst she attends a WRG camp on the Basingstoke.

A brief voyage, and a brief blog

We’d been expecting the weather to break today, but all that happened was that we had some rain overnight, and another glorious day today. We’ve come up to Goring, a voyage of all of three quarters of an hour.

Lots of mooring here, albeit on a wall, but perfectly useable. The village is great, with interesting shops and old houses to rubber neck at. We’ve had a cup of tea on Anna, a 1927 Dutch barge, one of the early luxemotors. It’s a continuous source of satisfaction that most boaters are so friendly towards one another.

You see a far greater variety of vessel on the river, of course, instead of the unending stream of narrowboats on the canals.

We had a good old natter about the iniquities of the various licensing systems, and Edmond had a rummage in his bits boxes to see if he had a possible replacement for a cabin hook which has broken on Sanity Again.

I’ve got a story to tell about trying to buy a new laptop for Sheila, but we’re still in the middle of it, and it’s very hot, and I’ve a meal to prepare, so it’s going to have to wait!

A great weekend to recover

What a good weekend that was: Jane got away with no trouble on Saturday morning, and then we had the rest of the time on the unrestricted bit of the Pangbourne Meadow mooring to chill out in pleasant weather, stroll around the riverside and generally feel like relaxed boaters again.

We used a bit of the time on Sunday to rearrange some of the stowage. We had too much stuff under the side berth, a lot of room in the less-easy-to-get-to bit under the head of the double berth, and nowhere to store recycling.

We shifted a couple of plastic storage boxes from the side berth to the double, one with the best glassware in it, and one with various books, files of papers that need to be kept but probably won’t be needed, and a load of photos and slides from the first half of our marriage.

We also gave the boat a sweep through and generally tidied up a bit. The liberated space under the side berth now holds a folding crate for paper and glass recycling, and a waste paper type bin for cans, which tend to dribble.

At four, we went to have a drink with Derek and Sheila on Clarence, who were moored further down the meadow. They had to rescue Clarence from their boat builder when he went bust eighteen months ago, and they are still completing the fit out.

It’s well on the way, now, and is already lovely to look at, but it’s meant a lot of hard work.

They were full of praise for their shell builder, Jonathan Wilson, who stepped in and helped with the necessary paper work so that the boat could be licensed and used on UK waters. Wilson Tyler don’t have a website at the moment, but there’s a useful owners club one.

We had a great evening on Clarence, drinking some excellent wine and having a right royal natter, but it did make for a very late dinner, and thus no blog last night.

Today we went into Pangbourne to top up the supplies; there’s a good Co-op, and a brilliant butcher, traditional and yet very clean and modern. It’s the first time for as long as I can remember that the butcher gave me a bill when we’d finished, and I had to take it to a separate till to pay. That way, the butcher doesn’t have to handle the money, with all the risks of cross contamination.

Having stored the goodies, we up anchored (literally) and came up Whitchurch lock to the Beale Park moorings about a mile up river for the rest of the day. A washload has been run, and we can look forward to another fairly lazy afternoon. It's a very poor Vodafone signal here, but no problem with 3.

Pangbourne, and a break

It’s always when the stress comes off that then fatigue kicks in, I guess, but I’ve been feeling cream crackered the past couple of days.

Yesterday was very productive – it just didn’t leave a lot of time to write stuff. We started the day by running up to the Tesco mooring, where there was plenty of room at half eight. My sister lives in Brooklyn, and is a naturalised American, but she was impressed with the size of the store; we should have shown her the Sainsbury’s in Newbury, obviously.

A big restock completed, we had a coffee whilst stowing the loot, and then set off for the Better Boating yard, since we had a full toilet tank, were down to about a quarter of the fuel tank, and much the same with the water. We’d heard good reports of BB, and weren’t disappointed. When we got there, we had to queue on the outside of two other boats, but since the one next to us was Jacaranda with Sandy and Dave Jones, this was no hardship.

Sandy and Dave are key figures in the IWA National, since Dave is Site Director and Sandy is the Admin supremo. We shared a lot of goss about the prospects for this year, then I took Sanity Again out onto the river to wind so as to have the pump out point alongside the jetty when Jacaranda left.

An OK pump out; good pump but rinse out from a watering can down the pump out fitting instead of the proper one, and diesel at 85 ppl domestic. You can make your own declaration, however, so the final price compares reasonably with others around here.

We also stumped up a quid to put some water in the tank. That hose was very slow, so we only got about half a tank, but it will keep us going until we get to Cleeve and the EA supply point.

We worked up Caversham, and stopped on what looked like public moorings opposite the hire base. Shortly a guy came across in a dory to ask how long we were going to be there; apparently they use those moorings to load and unload the boats. Sheila commented that there wasn’t a sign to that effect, and the bloke had to admit that they were in fact a public facility.

Nonetheless, after lunch we took off again; no point in annoying the locals, even if they are a bit cheeky with it.

Time was getting on for a Friday, so we gave some thought to stopping before our original target, which was Beale Park. The locky at Mapledurham told us that the offside moorings just above the weir stream could be had for £5 per night, or there were some on Pangbourne meadow for free.

We tried the Mapledurham ones, and got well stuck. They were shallow, and on a lee shore in a gusty wind. It took us around twenty minutes of increasingly frantic shafting to get away.

Fortunately, there was still space here at Pangbourne at half three, so we’ve settled for the weekend. The ones nearest the bridge and lock are 24 hours, and were all that was available yesterday afternoon. We explored Whitchurch yesterday, and Pangbourne briefly this morning, or I did; Jane took the opportunity to explore more thoroughly; you can’t keep a good American tourist down.

I was brief, as we wanted to grab one of the unrestricted moorings if it came free. Most are quite short, but we've managed to shoe horn in on one with the stern sticking out a bit. There’s a tree alongside, threatening our paintwork, so the anchor has been deployed as a mud weight to keep the stern out; it also has the merit of keeping us in deep water and floating upright.

Jane has now left us; her flight back to the States is later today. She caught the train from Pangbourne station into Paddington, from where she’ll be able to take the Heathrow Express.

We plan on a quiet weekend now, chilling out and pottering about after the excitement of the last few weeks.

On the Royal river again

So here we are back on the Thames, hooray, hooray! We made an early start this morning, and I watched anxiously as Sheila pressed the button on the swing bridge. As I tweeted last night, it broke down again not long after I’d posted yesterday afternoon, and it must have been over four hours before the BW guy appeared to sort it.

We felt quite sorry for the boat that was kept hanging about waiting; they’d planned to eat at the Cunning Man last night, so it was a real bind not to get away until half seven.

We had an uneventful trip down the final seven locks, though the weather was nothing special to report; a fine rain on and off, and a gusty, blustery wind that made boat handling quite tricky at times. Indeed, the wind gave me more trouble than the water flow, though the river has come up a bit since we came up it three weeks ago.

There was plenty of room on the visitor moorings above Sonning Lock, and we were there in good time for lunch, after a bit under four hours boating.

This afternoon, we took a walk into Sonning village; we plan to eat at the Fisherman’s Bar in the Great House Hotel tonight, right by Sonning Bridge. We checked out the Bull as well, but it appears to do food only at lunchtimes these days.

As I said in a reply to one of Baz’z comments, I guess part of my irritation with the K&A is that it was the first canal we were involved with, being members of what was then the K&A Canal Society when we lived in Southampton. We used to drive over to Savernake, and daydream about the day we could take our own boat through the Bruce Tunnel.

Well, we’ve done it, and it was very hard work, but at least we can criticise the beast from a position of knowledge now. I can well see that it’s a very nice canal to keep a boat on, so that you don’t have to slog up all those locks in order to enjoy the good bits.

One other thing to mention; the 3 connection is a bit iffy here at Sonning, so I’m using the O2 modem for the first time. Very straightforward to set up, and £2 for 24 hours and 500 Mb. It’s not hugely fast here, but much more stable than 3.

Spending a quietly wet day at Theale

A peaceful night with plenty of sleep had a rapid awakening at the end this morning. We’d established last night that the wide beam boat behind us was planning to move today, such that we would be able to pull back and get off the bridge landing. Her steerer had said that he wouldn’t be in a hurry, as he’d arrived at 11.45 on Monday, so had most of the morning to move.

(As we know from Baz’s comment on yesterday's post, even a few hours over can get you a patrol notice here.)

However, as I lay dozing in the early morning light at half six, I heard the unmistakable ching of a line being pulled through a mooring ring. A quick peek out showed that the guy behind was preparing to move, so we bundled clothes on and got Sanity Again moved back, much to our relief.

After a relaxed cup of tea and breakfast, we strolled into town to get some shopping; a big Co-op, and lots of sandwich shops, but not a lot else in Theale.

Back at the boat, we had a little orgy of cleaning and catching up with similar chores like the filing. My sister Jane is expected this afternoon, and it makes for a good motivation to get the boat looking reasonably tidy.

The weather continues very unsettled, but the forecast is no longer quite as bad as it was yesterday, though the wind may still be a problem when moving tomorrow.

There’s not a lot else to add; the swing bridge has been behaving itself this morning. It’s another road that’s quite busy during the school run, so we’ll aim for an early start tomorrow, methinks.

More hassle from the K&A

Just as I was beginning to be reconciled to the K&A, a little bit, it all went pear shaped again.

We had an excellent evening with Graham and Brenda yesterday, showing off the boat, then having a jar or two in the Row Barge, then back to the boat for a cup of tea.

Up we got this morning, having decided to get through Woolhampton swing bridge before the rush hour. Having got down the lock without any trouble, I waited with a radio in front of me on the slide whilst Sheila went to swing the bridge. What I heard from her after a while wasn’t a message to come on, but that the bridge had failed. The barriers went down, the wedges withdrew, but the bridge didn’t swing.

I rang the BW emergency number, and we waited for more than 90 minutes, in the rain, turning back cars from both ends. Most drivers were OK, if resigned, but just a few seemed to think it was our fault. Several commented that this was a regular occurrence, ever since the control systems were ‘upgraded’ two years ago.

When the BW guy turned up, it soon became apparent that it wasn’t going to be a quick fix. There are two cabinets full of electronics, plus one for the hydraulic pump, plus the control plinth itself. It was half ten before he managed to get it to the point where he could persuade it to open for us, and we were on our way.

As expected, the river gave no trouble, with a bit of a swing one way and then the other, but nothing Sanity Again couldn’t handle. Pulling up at the landing below the bridge involved burning some diesel, but then I got the stern into the slack water below the bridge abutment and hopped off, stern line in hand.

Sheila got her key back (it had been stuck in the plinth all this time) and we set off for Aldermaston. That bridge was fine, though the piling gang working immediately below it made for interesting navigation. The weather continued wet off and on all morning.

We didn’t have any fresh bread on board, as we’d expected to be able to shop at Theale well before lunch, but the Visitor Centre at Aldermaston sells sandwiches. Down Padworth Lock, and it was nearly feeding time and we needed a break, so for once we stayed on the lock landing to scoff sarnies.

The next bridge is also called Padworth, and as it swung, it stopped half way across for a while. Sheila took her finger off the button, pushed again, and round it went. Sighs of relief all round.

We zoomed on down through the very pleasant river section, working bridges and locks without further trouble. Arriving at Theale at three, we found the 48 hour moorings, which had been deserted on the way up, full of rather scruffy liveaboard type boats. We have to be here tomorrow to meet my sister, so we’ve stopped on the bridge landing, which fortunately, and unusually for this canal, is about 150 feet long.

Hopefully one of the boats on the moorings behind us will go tomorrow, and we can pull back for the second night. Meanwhile, this bridge has failed, and there’s a day boat tied in front of us, waiting for BW to turn up.

The other bit of bad news is that the weather is forecast to get worse, with heavy rain and wind on Thursday, just when we will be working down through Reading.

Heigh ho, at least we’ll be off the least pleasurable canal I’ve ever cruised, bar none.

To Woolhampton in the rain

Another early start, another dozy afternoon. We got away at seven this morning and put in another long day’s boating, by our standards, arriving at Woolhampton at twenty past eleven; four hours twenty minutes boating, two and a half hours actually moving the boat. Nine locks, one of them turf sided, and a handful of swing bridges.

We passed a BW wide boat just above Monkey Marsh, which then set off and followed us to the lock. I offered to loose him by, but he told us to carry on. It looks as if they were loading materiel from the visitor moorings below the lock, the ones from which you can visit Thatcham. They are doing some urgently needed bank support work where the canal runs alongside the common between Widmead and Monkey Marsh locks.

The weather has changed, still very warm, but intermittently wet. We keep dozing off in the afternoon; I guess the Mediterranean conditions are producing Mediterranean sleep patterns.

Tonight, we meet up with Graham and Brenda Keens; Graham has a complete set of Festival Newsletters from the 2006 Beale Park to let us have. It’s also an excuse to buy him a drink to say thanks for a load of help he gave me with my Nokia 6310i earlier in the year.

We won’t make such an early start tomorrow. I reckon we’re about an hour’s cruising from Aldermaston, whose powered lift bridge carries a major road, and we don’t want to open it during the rush hour. At least the river isn't running very high, so the notoriously tricky section out of the lock and through the Woolhampton lift bridge shouldn't be too hairy.

Summer socializing

Must say, the social life whilst on the K&A has been quite exceptional, and looks likely to remain so for a bit yet. Partly, that’s a matter of it being summer, and of us meeting folk who, like us, are pottering about before foregathering at the National site at Beale Park next month.

We had, as I tweeted, an excellent session with Derek and Sheila Mills of Clarence yesterday afternoon. Derek had passed on some useful tips about Hurricane installation during the build of Sanity Again, and it was good to meet up, show off the new boat and partake of a modest drink or two with them.

No sooner had they gone, and I had turned my attention to making dinner, than Colin and Jane from Slow Gin knocked on the roof. They fall into this category of pottering blue shirts; they’re liveaboards, with a permanent mooring near Newbold on Avon, and were out for their summer’s cruise and taking in the K&A.

We put them off for a half hour so’s we could get something to eat, then gave them the guided tour and shared a few more potations. They’ve also presented us with a bottle of Slow Gin’s sloe gin, a nice prospect for us.

It meant a bit of a late night by our standards, and we had to show determination to get going early this morning, but we did it, moving down to the water point at half six, and refilling the tank whilst eating breakfast.

We had a pleasant run down to Newbury, taking just on three hours for the seven locks and handful of miles. We shared the final few locks with a family on an ex-Reading Marine hire boat (now operated by ABC), which made for sociable boating.

At half ten, there were good spaces at the visitor moorings between the swing bridge and the lock, where we’ve been for the rest of the day, shopping and pottering on board.

An early night tonight methinks, before the run to Woolhampton tomorrow, and our rendezvous with Graham and Brenda Keens.

Back on line in Hungerford

Well, we’ve made it back to Hungerford and a 3 connection, and it’s very hot. We shared down the last few locks with Little Mel, whose crew seem to feel much as we do about the canal; yes, it’s very nice scenery and so on, but nothing that can’t be had elsewhere with a lot less effort.

Never mind, it’s clear a lot of people do enjoy boating this waterway; presumably they are fitter/younger/more masochistic than we are. Oh, and fair play, the Bruce Tunnel is a delight, wide, high and straight.

We’ve restocked from the Tesco that used to be a Somerfield, and have spent much of the rest of the day reading quietly in whatever shade we can find. We’ve got a number of social engagements coming up; Derek and Sheila Mills from Clarence tomorrow, Graham and Brenda Keens from Jannock on Monday and my sister from Brooklyn, NY for three days from next Wednesday.

And I used to worry if moving aboard would reduce the number of folk we could have a drink with.

It’s too hot for me to feel very inspired today; I’ll try and get back into the swing of it over the next few days.

Meanwhile, here are some photos from the furthest west we got along the canal:

So many of the locks have to be left empty, it was a joy to find one that could be treated in the ordinary way

BW fondly imagines that this constitutes a visitor mooring here at Pewsey.

The same mooring from a longer viewpoint; it was nearly deep enough to get Sanity Again right up against the bank.

Why we won't be coming back to the K&A

Well, I’m back, briefly, as we’ll be back in the land of limited connections again tomorrow; it’ll be Friday before we’re back at Hungerford and reliable signals. We’ve made it to Pewsey, and have decided to turn back here, since all reports on the towpath are of merry chaos at Devizes, where folk are waiting for the Caen Hill flight to reopen on Saturday.

We had a great time with Elanor last weekend, and met her new dog, a Doberman cross bitch called Tia, though the one thing Elanor doesn’t love about her is the name, and may well change it once she’s settled down.

As a result of her visit, I’ve got several new toys to play with, including an O2 PAYG dongle (but no signal for it yet) and a new phone from Vodafone on a very good deal. It includes casual data use at 50p for a day, up to 25 Mb, so easily enough to check email, although not much scope for web browsing. This means that I now have three choices for internet access.

We’ve had a good Voda signal up to today; here at Pewsey we can get voice OK, but no data.

One other good thing to report; we had a visit from Rob Buckland of the Wiltshire Fire Service, who checked out the boat and fitted a free smoke alarm. An excellent service, and they’ve had the sense to use an experienced boater, who was a really nice guy to boot.

We won’t be coming back to the K&A. I can quite see why it appeals to some, but those 56, broad, not well maintained locks between here and the Thames are just too much; this pound is beautiful, sure, but we know of lots of others, just as beautiful or even more so, that don’t involve the blood sweat and tears of getting here. Even now we're here, the pleasure is spoilt by the thought of having to slog back.

Good points about the K&A: the scenery, the people, the villages, um...

Bad points: the locks, the lack of places to moor, the railway line alongside for so much of it, the locks, the depth, the grotty state of it, the locks, the smell at Crofton (Wilton Water was covered in thick, rotting algae).

The real problem, as you'll have gathered, is the locks; at more than one per mile between the Thames and Wootton Rivers, there’s simply never a break from them. It’s not just that they are so badly maintained, it’s that so many of them are poorly designed, and some are only just 70 feet long, so that going back down is going to be real fun as well.

Then there’s the water flows across and around and through them, especially between Newbury and Reading. Rennie was a brilliant architect, but rubbish at engineering a canal.

We’ve coped with plenty of heavy lock flights in our time; the Cheshire Locks we quite enjoy, and Hatton and Tardebigge hold no terrors for us, but those are over in one or two days. These just go on, and on, and on.

Don’t let me put you off; if you don’t mind some very hard work, every day for a week, can put up with a railway line within 100 metres at every mooring, and enjoy the challenge of boating a canal that’s been minimally maintained for the twenty years since it reopened, the K&A will suit you down to the ground.

Or, like us, you may need to visit for yourself just to find out what it’s like, but like one of my regular readers, it will be the trip of a lifetime, as you won’t want to come back.

It will be interesting to hear how the new trial management arrangements work out, with the K&A Canal Trust taking an active part; they could certainly do more, in the way that SUCS has on the Shroppie and Llangollen, installing visitor moorings with adequate depth and generally adding amenities to the canal.

That's enough for now; next proper post will probably be on Friday, and in the meantime I’ll use Twitter to add comments to the sidebar on the right.