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Karen enjoying a beer on
Welsh Road lock gates on Saturday evening
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Buddy and I left early on
Friday morning for the water point at Calcutt.
Well, it wasn’t that early really but considering we haven’t moved for
nearly a fortnight it felt like it. It
was fantastic weather especially as it had been so wet and windy on Thursday.
I was under a promise to
Karen to do no more than three locks so that I didn’t aggravate my back. After taking on water, I went down the top
lock at Calcutt and fortunately shared it with a hire boat so I didn’t have to
do too much hard work 😉
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Helpful hire boaters on
the first lock of the day
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I was then going to stop
at the hire boat yard to get a pump out but the (helpful) hire boaters had
parked right alongside the wharf where I needed to get to. When the hirers return their boats, they are
meant to moor up perpendicularly to keep the wharf free. The guy wasn’t confident about doing that so
he was told to leave the boat there and one of the yard men would move it. I was asked to hover in the middle until the
boat was moved out of the way.
For those of you who are
interested in pump outs (not many I know 😊), this is how it’s done. The large pipe sucks everything out of the
holding tank. The hose is then used to
refill the tank with water to rinse the tank whilst the boat is rocked to make
sure everything gets rinsed off. The
large pipe is then used to pump the waste out again. This particular yard do this four times which is good –
when we go to the self-operated pump outs there isn’t time for a rinse as they
run on a timer of, usually, eight minutes.
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Big green hose doing the sucking
– man getting ready to put the rinsing water in
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When I went into the
chandlery to pay for the pump out I also bought a couple of O rings to replace
the ones that had split on both the water and fuel caps. Every time Mark has topped us up with diesel he has told me he worries that we are getting water in the fuel tank because the seal on the cap had broken - my guilt finally got the better of me.
I then went down the last
two locks of the Calcutt flight and was lucky that there were boats coming out
of both so I didn’t have to park up the boat and go and set them.
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Two boats coming out of the
bottom lock whilst I came out of the middle lock
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When I got to Tomlow (yes,
another one of our favourite spots) I saw a fisherman right at the spot where
we moor. I deliberately didn’t moor too
close to him but he wasn’t happy; hardly responded to my cheery. “Good morning”. I went in to prepare lunch and could hear a
lot of deliberately loud noises and when I came out to eat lunch on deck, he
had gone, obviously in a huff.
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Fisherman moored in ‘our’
spot in front of the boat
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After the fisherman had
gone
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Talking about the
fisherman reminded me of the conversation I had had with one at the reservoir
when I took Buddy out for his first walk in the morning. Buddy, as usual, wanted to sniff around the
fisherman’s gear but I called him back. The
fisherman told me not to worry and that the dog is just being nosey. I agreed but added that many fishermen don’t take
to kindly to it and he responded that a lot of fishermen are just grumpy old buggers. He went on to ask how many walks Buddy gets a
day as he said he has seen us around a lot lately and several times each day. I did recognise him as he always fishes in a
spot that doesn’t get the sun so asked him why and he told me it was his lucky
spot.
Later in the afternoon Ann
arrived and Karen came home from work early (not really as she’s not meant to
work on Friday in the first place ☹). We had a
pleasant evening staying in and playing cards.
On Saturday morning we set
out for Welsh Road and, for once, shared locks all the way. We had 15 locks to descend and, with such
brilliant weather, Karen and Ann walked the whole way with Buddy whilst doing
the locks. Gill, who was driving the
other boat had her sister and niece with her too so there were plenty of people to
help at the locks so we had a good old chat in each lock.
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Gill on her boat in one of
the locks
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Gill had some fascinating
stories and I was particularly interested in the vineyard that she and her
husband run in Ludlow. They bought the
land many years ago and, after spending time in France learning the trade,
started the vineyard from scratch eleven years ago.
We all stopped for lunch
at Bascote after the first 11 locks.
Karen and I were eager to see what had been grown in three fields around
there as, you may remember, we had seen the strange courgette like plants
growing when we came through last time.
It was obvious this time – the fields were full of pumpkins, many of
which had obviously been picked already.
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Karen thought I should
have gone and taken one as we think the poorer quality ones had been left behind
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Gill and I had got in a
good routine sharing the locks, especially as there were a lot of boats coming
up and we had to negotiate round them in the short pounds. When we reached the last lock of the day,
Gill went first as we wanted to moor above the next lock and it’s always easier
to moor when there are no boats passing.
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Leaving Bascote bottom
lock – the last of the day
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We moored at Welsh Road
lock and were lucky to be the only boat there.
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| Our mooring for the next week or so |
We spent the rest of the
afternoon getting rid of some of the summer plants that had gone over and
repotting with some winter plants.
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Karen getting ready to do
some gardening and Buddy just wanting to relax
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Winter plants on the front
of the boat now (excuse the untidy lines)
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Whilst we were gardening a
Red Admiral kept bombing us:
When we finished gardening we went
to have a beer or two on the lock gates that were still in the sun – see picture
at the top. Whilst chatting, Karen commented that this was the first time we had been moored on our own for quite a few weeks. Since going to Cropredy, which was obviously busy with the festival, there have been boats everywhere so we both felt really fortunate to be on our own again.
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