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.