Next day, Sorrel had gone ahead early to meet friends and relatives at Reading for a few days. We made a later start, calling at the Thames & Kennet Marina - which is enormous - you travel for about a half mile from the river before you get to the office(!), - for a pumpout, then turned into the K&A and arrived at the Abbey Backwater - a nice mooring - to find it almost full, and no space 30' long!. Turning was impossible - the top and the bottom are the same thing on the other side, so first a trip to the main line for winding, and back again to a temporary stop a 1/4 mile away, till a space became available in the afternoon, where we settled for the weekend. By Tuesday, a boat had turned up with a couple onboard, the wife of whom had broken her leg. Our friends decided to stay and help them work their way westwards to home, and as the three boats couldn't fit the locks together, we went ahead alone in the increasing rain. At County Lock, who should we meet but our two newly-met friends with their "new" boat, and they were only too happy to work the passage to Aldermaston together with us. A long day for us, at time very wet, but a happy one, even when they got stuck into an island, having missed the channel sign, which was all covered in bushes! We left Aldermaston next morning, in the rain again, with me having to raise the lift-bridge twice, as the ship's mate/chief mutineer had gone below out of the rain, and didn't see my first lifting of the bridge! I'm sure the traffic wasn't amused.
Working K&A locks single-handed is hard work, and some days were just that, and worse when you get the locks that seem to be bloody-minded, with gates that re-open themselves after you've shut them, or shut themselves.... and you have to walk all round them again. Locks where the gates are so badly balanced that you can hardly move them at all, and locks that fill so violently that unless you only open one paddle, and that only partially, (which means it takes for ever to fill) you are in utter danger of flooding and sinking the boat. Locks like those at Bedwyn - new in 1998 - no landing places AT ALL, not even a gap in the wild growth on each bank, which is highly dangerous, gates badly balanced, and paddle gear that is as stiff as hell. Some of the "new" reduction gearboxes are so crudely made that all the gear teeth "bottom" on each other and on the paddle rack, making it extremely hard to wind them, moving just one tooth space at a time. You'd think that BW had would have learned how to make and fit gates and paddlegear by now.... The only paddlegear that seems to work well is that which uses slipping clutches in both directions, instead of gears and ratchets. They may not be traditional, but at least an average person CAN work them! Mind, working locks and swing bridges, with just one person on the boat and one ashore, does give one time to study the flora, whilst recovering from one's exertions!
A pretty plant seen in the bank.
Next