Sellars Bridge to Gloucester – And the wait goes on!

Monday 20th June

Well, well, well, what a surprise Monday it was really wet! Yes, once again it was pissing down. We titted about for a while but in the end we decided we really had to get going. So off we went to Gloucester. We stopped at Sainsbury’s on the way to have another stock up. We had to wait on the end of the moorings because a chap had moored a yoghurt pot right in the middle to put some petrol in and there wasn’t room for us either in front or behind him. After he had refuelled and buggered off we moved up to moor and went to the shop.

Shopping done and rain stopped (hoorah) we went to look for a mooring. We wanted to moor at the lightship and there was one space but after we winkled our way into it we noticed that we were about 10ft into the Long Term Permit Holder moorings. We had a word with the bridge keeper and had a look in the docks and in order to not cause any confrontations we decided to move in to the docks which were practically empty.

This surprised us as we had expected the docks to be full of people waiting to go on to the river. The bridge keeper told us that the lock keeper had let 4 boats down on to the river this morning but as far as he knew Upper Lode Lock was not operational. So where they had gone he didn’t know. Some more boats left later including one at about 6-30pm.

Anyway, as it had rained hard for another good few hours that morning and we still need there to be a 3 day window of opportunity to get to Stourport so we decided to wait until tomorrow to see what effect today’s rain has had on the river levels.

Tuesday 21st June

First thing this morning we collared the bridge keeper when he came and took the boat names and he said as far as he knew conditions on the river were still the same as yesterday. We said we would talk to the lock keeper. Then we decided to stop here today and give things a bit more time to improve.

We went to the tackle shop again and Sainsbury’s again after which we went in to town for sausages, eggs and some more fabulous haddock from the market. In the Eastgate Centre we nearly got talked into sponsoring a fifth dog with Dog’s Trust but managed to refuse, four is enough!

On the way back to the boat we encountered a couple with an albino Crow called Polaris. Apparently they had rescued it a few years ago when it fell out of the nest and they were taking it for a walk along with their two dogs.

So what are we going to do tomorrow? Well, we don’t know until we have spoken to the lock keeper. Watch this space ………………..

Bridget Written by: