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.

Slogging along the K & A

It’s gone all close and sticky today, and I’m seriously weary after the excitements of Towney and Woolhampton, not to mention the Aldermaston lift bridge.

The news from Caen Hill is not good at all; I gather that the lock 24 gates have completely collapsed, and new ones will have to be fabricated, involving a four week closure, so it looks as if the argument about Bristol will be academic.

We continue to cruise in company with Priston, whose crew give invaluable advice, making this section of the canal much easier than it would otherwise be.

I must say, I do hope that things improve after a bit, though some say the really good bit is the far side of Devizes, so we may not get to see it.

This waterway was remainder status in very recently of course, hence the lack of maintenance for cruising purposes. If the public spending cuts bite as hard as forecast, then we had all better get used to boating in these conditions, I guess.

For my money, we’d be better to mothball some of the less popular and badly maintained routes until the wheel turns again, rather than struggle to keep the whole system going. That would lead to an acrimonious debate about which canals to close down for a bit, of course, but I’m thinking of the ones which spend a lot of their time stopped anyway, so K&A, Huddersfield Narrow, Rochdale above Manchester...

I await the howls of rage!