Thursday 24th August 2006 Reading to Long Whittenham It had rained over night, but it never got really heavy. We didn't get set off until 11:30am, after going back to Tescos to buy some breadcakes they didn't have the previous day, and finding only nasty hard ones this morning. Many boats had gone by, and others were filling in gaps at the moorings left by others leaving. When we reached the lock there was a huge queue, with about 12 boats. Thankfully it is a big lock, and so we were through after 3 locks.
With the Reading Music Festival on, all the meadow near Tescos was a car park. There were thousands of people walking up towards the site, and a good few hundred just in the queue for the trip boat. Just after we passed Caversham Bridge, Oxford one of the Salters boats, came steaming passed. It's nice to see these old boats really moving, and Caversham Princess we saw later was not so pretty when pushing it. There were thousands of tents laid out, and you could see the tops of big tents, and stages. Looks like the national, I thought. After passing miles of security fencing we had got up with the lock full in front, and just nicely got past all but one when we reached the lock. We got 8 boats in (one was a widebeam fibreglass cruiser), and we were second at the next lock, which in this case helped as only one other narrowboat could get in (with the cruiser at the front). We passed the boats moored at Beale Park, and spotted the rough area of our mooring (N1F5), but we weren't stopping. Dad wanted to have a look at the new cut near Abingdon, so we kept going. At Goring we saw Jannock, Harnser et al coming out of the lock as we arrived, and managed to say hello to Brian, and Diana (who for some reason was left on land, and had to jump back on board). Now we were going against the main flow we didn't have to wait at any locks, and we made good time up the rest of the locks. There wasn't even many boats coming down, and by 16:30 it was back to normal summer time levels of traffic. We went up the Clifton weir stream to Long Whittenham. Just passed the moorings for The Plough is a wider bit that I turned in. There were two canoes, and one of them had obviously fallen in as she was swimming alongside. Once she was clear I turned the boat easily (room for a 70 footer) and we went to eat in The Plough. Their moorings aren't really designed for narrowboats, but their food was good. Mike --- Mike Askin nb. Shoestring http://shoestring.zapto.org/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/canals-list/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
