Saturday, Sunday, Monday 25+26+27th August 2006 Beale Park to Reading (on Monday)
Engines as usual woke us up. The bloke on the outside started his at 08:00, but soon turned it off. Unfortunately at 08:30, the other side started his. There were more vibrations in our boat from his engine than for mine (well nearly anyway). What was odd was that it was a modern water cooled engine in a fairly new boat. We went around the site after booking in. In fact we had never been so close to the site, and actually walked back with the rally pack before going onto site. It was a good site, and Dad found plenty of tut, and knickknacks to browse over. We got back issues of Canal and Riverboat, as this is far cheaper than buying them new! We bought some boating supplies (fan belt, filter for the toilet tank), and bothered various boat builders (just looking). I wanted to make the engine on Shoestring a little less in your face, so bought some sound insulation. We looked at the Thinsulite, but didn't really know how good its noise insulation was. We went back to TW Marine where we bought the sound insulation for Kismet, and were a little disappointed they had not brought any with them. We were the first to ask at the rally, normally people get it delivered. We needed to know how much to buy, so we came back on Monday where Dad bartered them down to a good price. We also went to Marine Engine Services, and bother Peter Thompson about my Lister problems. It's leaking oil from various places, and still producing a good bloom of smoke. I decided to buy a tachometer from them, and bought a decent copy of the manual rather than my umpteen loose sheets photocopied version. We enjoyed the illuminated parade, and watched them all pile into the lake. We also met up with David and Jan King off Jappa, and Eric and Doreen Wood off Cre-dal-wood. Kew was on our mooring block, for some reason near the bank, and so they had to pull out for the parade. They stayed on the outside over night, but after unloading most of their stuff across the back of the boats, they now wanted to move back to the inside. Because we were going to be first off, we moved to the outside. The lock was booked for 16:30, and we reached the lock just in time. Just as we reached the lock mooring, the gates opened, and we were straight in, with another boat then followed us in. We emptied our Elsan there, and then caught the other boat and some others at the next lock. We had to wait a little while, and then we thought we would not get in the lock. The other boat that went down the last lock then moored up to take on water, but it would have been nice for them to tell us. We moved into the lock, and before Tilehurst overtook everyone even though one of the boats just didn't want to move over from the middle. Two fibreglass boats (one of which I overtook) caught back up, and over took us again at Tilehurst. The Reading festival ground still had a lot of tents up, but the carparks were empty, and just some stragglers were wondering down the towpath. At Reading we had to wait for a large dutch barge to go through on his own, before the next three boats went in. There just wasn't quite enough length in the lock to get two big boats in, and only the width for two across. We found a gap at Tescos, and pulled in there for the night. I already had the shepherds pie in the oven, and so didn't take long to get tea. --- 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/
