Tuesday, June 07, 2011

Descending to Hungerford

We woke up to bright sunshine and thought it would be a good day to move. We are now on the long descent to Reading and we knew we had a few locks in front of us, good job it's easier going down. We passed Great Bedwyn and were surprised at how many moorings there were. The black clouds were forming either side of us, but we appeared to be missing the rain. We passed through Little Bedwyn and then onto the Froxfield flight of three. All was going well till we got to Cobblers Lock where we met a couple on a large boat coming out of the lock and trying to pick up their crew. First he moved onto the lock landing we were nearly on and we then had to reverse, and then when we tried to go round him to get into the lock, he let his boat drift out and we had to quickly reverse again to stop his side rail going down the side of Derwent6. The Axiom prop got us out of trouble again. He said sorry as we crept into the lock...Phew! We then got to one of the trickiest locks on the K & A. It's a lock with a swing bridge in the middle of it. It's in the middle of marshes and the wind causes a problem here. The lock gates are very old and the paddles difficult. The side walls are also caving in, but these things are meant to try us and we got through ok.
As we pulled into Hungerford the heavens opened and we got a warm and snug wave out the portholes from Fiona and John on n.b Epiphany.
We went down the lock and a boat pulled off the 48 hour moorings just as we pulled out. Brill!!!The rain showers continued on and off all afternoon. Al popped over to Tesco's and did some shopping. We then had our fajitas and Al walked over to the ice cream shop for dessert. As the showers got heavier we didn't feel like going out anywhere so we sat in listening to music and reading.

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