Friday 25th August 2006 Long Whittenham To Beale Park
It was a nice peaceful night, but woke to find the boat leaning. The level had dropped about 2 inches overnight, and the back of the boat was already on the bottom. I managed to push it off, and by 10:30 we were off towards Abingdon. It doesn't look very far on the map, but after 2 hours we reached the new junction with the Wilts and Berks. We tried to get the boat along side the bank to get off and have a look, but choose a particularly shallow bit. One of the volunteers getting it ready for the opening after the rally came down, and had a chat with us. We moved the boat a few feet up the river to another point and got the bow right upto the river bank. I had a quick look round, and Dad spent over half an hour looking around. We left at 13:15, and went down the weir stream there. There is obviously a standard channel down there, as one of the corners was buoyed. One the way back to the junction Dad said he wanted to go up to Abingdon, so we went the extra mile and a half upto the bridge. When we got there Reading, a trip boat, was turning just below the lock, and they overtook us once we got past the old Wilts and Berks junction. I was expecting a wait at the next lock because of the Salter tripboat, but they went straight down the weir stream, I'm not sure if they just turn around, and come back to Abingdon again, or if there is a landing somewhere. We were straight into the lock, and then had to wait 5 minutes while another boat caught up. At the next lock we had to wait for a day boat which managed to get itself across the lock on the way out. The other boat stopped and chatted to the lock keeper there, while we continued on. At Cleeve Lock we had a wait, and the tripboat had caught up with us again. We had to wait while they went through, but it didn't take to long. We just nicely made it to Goring Lock before the lock keeper went home. In fact we waited for another boat locked through after us, and left the lock at 19:01. Reached our moorings at 19:30, and got a welcoming 'You can't moor there'. After some talking and some messy manoeuvring we slotted into our mooring at N1K5. --- 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/
