I've not been all that motivated to send in reports on the move. In fact truth to tell I have not been at all motivated, so here's just a summary of stage 1 - about 10 days ago.
Left the Park End (G&S) mooring at 7:00am on Friday 3rd, into Gloucester Docks by 8:20, but no lock keeper to be found ! Tied to a pontoon and despatched crew to buy a newspaper. The lockie arrived at 9am apologising for a rostering issue, so off we shot by about 9:15 for a long day heading upstream in good weather. Made steady progress at about 4 to 5 mph over the ground and realised that if not for the Gloucester delay we could have made the trip to Lincombe before end of manned hours at 6pm. However chose to tie up on the downstream side of Bevere Lock by 4:45pm and enjoyed a much earned G&T and some peace sitting on the pontoon. Saturday 4th about two hours up to Stourport through Bevere, Holt and Limcombe locks, full breakfast moored at the pontoon outside The Angel Inn. Checked the status for locking up to the basin and performed first manual locking for 30 months without difficulty. But oh . . . . that scraping of the blacking . . . . you soon get used to it again though. Had arranged to unofficially borrow nb Marmadukes mooring in the Clock Basin for a few days. Performed nifty reverse back into double slot, but nobody saw it. Spent a couple of hours washing down all the paint surfaces, which had not been done for quite a while, so UM then looked quite tidy. Now it needs some Auto Glym polish, sometime. And another time, some Brasso. Ho..ho ! Beeky
