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.