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.