Tuesday 14th May
At 6 am this morning Ken asked me if I was awake, I said no! We got up about 20 minutes later. Why were we up so early I hear you cry? Well, with Claydon locks having been closed yesterday we thought there would be a backlog of boats about today and the fact that weather forecast for later on this afternoon was for more wet and wind, we decided we’d better get the Hell out of Dodge ASAP.
We set off at 7-30 am, taking almost 30 mins to get from where we were at Keen’s Bridge, past all the moored boats, visitors and permit holders, to the water point and sanitary station. I did filling and emptying and Ken popped to the Spar shop. By 8-30 am we were ready to go.
As I walked up to Cropredy Lock I passed the first boat which had come down. There were a lot of boats moored on the 48 hour moorings and a boat moored opposite, so there was not room for Ken and this boat to pass. He had to back up through the bridge to the winding hole, where he had just come from! I carried on to the lock and started helping out with the next boat coming down. After they had gone there was no sign of Ken approaching so I helped the next one down too.
By the time they were ready to leave the lock there was a boat approaching but it was not my boat! It was another one which had been moored just through the bridge. When it had come in to the lock I went down and saw Ken finally arriving at the lock approach. He told me later that this chap had told him there was another boat coming and he wouldn’t be able to get through so he, Ken, backed up through the bridge again (nearly wrecking our satellite dish) to let that boat came through as well. By the time he got going again this chap had nipped out in front of him!
Consequently it took us half an hour to get up the lock from the water point! The rest of the journey went smoothly and there were a lot of other boats about so the locks were all in our favour except Broadmoor Lock. There were a couple of heavy showers but fortunately these occurred after I had finished doing the locks and was inside!
We got diesel at Fenny Marina (£1-09 p/l with a 20/80 split) and then pulled into the only available mooring spot on the 14 day moorings, that was lucky. It started to rain shortly after we moored up and has continued to do so ever since.
Tomorrow we are off again, to Napton.
