It rained all night, but by the morning had more or less stopped, with just bits of drizzle. The top of the boat was covered in leaves and seed heads from the willow trees along the bank. As we knew it would be a longish day we set off about 8:00. Breakfast, consisting of bacon in a baguette, was taken on the move about 10ish.

We arrived at Upper Lode lock just after eleven o’clock. I had checked beforehand and knew that there had bee a high spring tide peaking at Ashleworth at around 9:00. We only dropped about 6 inches in the lock and as soon as we came out it was clear why. The tide had just turned and we were running fast on the ebb. I had never seen the river this high without it being in flood. Even though we throttled back quite a bit we were still doing about 7.5 mph by the GPS.

It seemed no time at all before we were heading down the parting towards Gloucester lock. On the way we had had to avoid all sorts of floating debris that had been brought up by the tide.

Up through Gloucester lock and on down to Splatt bridge . We were intending to stop at Sainsbury’s to do some shopping, but we left that for later in the week.

When we got there NB Uncle Mort was moored up, so we had a chat with Andrew & Sheila and arranged to meet them tommorrow.