Friday 18th May
I have been feeling much better today and we have had a good trip. There are no strong stream warnings along here at the moment so it was just the usual flow we were contending with which meant we could go a bit faster too. We have travelled 13.5 miles and 6 locks from Runnymede to Cookham. This took 7 hours but we did have to wait for 40 minutes at Boulter’s Lock in Maidenhead while divers fixed a problem with one of the paddles.
We passed Windsor Castle this morning and I took loads of photos but most of them were crap. Also the planes landing at Heathrow were passing quite closely over head so I took loads of photos of those too but most of them were also crap. I didn’t take photos of all the fabulous waterside residences and boats because there were too many so not much to bore you with photographically today!
During our enforced wait at Boulter’s Lock we had a slight problem with George wanting to get off for a wee. Ordinarily this would have not been a problem but we were moored on a narrow concrete ledge which wasn’t really conducive to having a Bull Terrier walking along it trying to find somewhere to go! Especially one who is as blind as a bat on one side. I was hanging on to him for dear life I can tell you! Anyway mission was accomplished without mishap.
At the next lock we had to wait while the lock keeper emptied it so I got George off again, on to the grass this time, in case he wanted to do any thing else (which he did) and he totally showed me up by taking ages to find the right spot so the lock keeper had to wait for him to have a crap before we could go in to the lock! Talk about embarrassed!
Our mooring at Cookham cost £6 which we didn’t think was too bad considering most of the ones we have seen (since Runnymede) were £8 per 24 hrs. We just got in here in time because there was a suddenly an influx of yoghurt pots wanting to moor up here for tomorrow’s Sailing Club Open Day or what ever it is. Apparently us narrowboaters piss the yoghurt potters off because our boats are so long and take up too much room on the moorings. Oh dear!
