Devizes Wharf

11.5 miles and 0 locks. Just a very pleasant chug along the 15 mile ‘long pound’ towards Devizes today. We arrived here about 11:30, but didn’t go down the flight as our crew, in the shape of two of our grandsons, is arriving tomorrow evening. We’ll go down the flight on Friday. We encountered quite

Pewsey Wharf

10 locks 7 miles Another earlish start. Up through lock 60, then topped up with water. The water point here must be one of the worst positioned on the whole network! It’s immediately above the lock on the off side, but there is only about 40ft of actual mooring space. So the front of the

Crofton

6.5 Miles, 13 locks It rained most of the night, but had stopped by dawn. We breakfasted and then were away by 7:30. The locks on this stretch come fairly frequent, about one every half mile. We did them all on own own except for the last two. Many of the bottom gates were leaking

Hardly moved!

Only about 200yds and one lock today. This morning we moved to just above the lock. Below was a 24hr mooring and we wanted to stay another day. Also the mooring above the lock was more conveinent for the work we wanted to do touching up the paintwork on the side. The day was spent

Hungerford

Terrific thunderstorms during the night. It started about 4 o’clock, really hard rain, loud thunder and lightening. But by the morning it had stopped and the sky was mostly grey, but with some blue. 10 locks and 9.5 miles today. Yesterday we shared all the locks, today we shared none. In fact we saw very

Newbury

Hot, hot, hot today. It’s still 26 C at five o’clock! Shortly after setting off this morning we caught up with narrowboat ‘Amy’ at Woolhampton swing bridge. They let us through and we then spent the rest of the day with them sharing the next ten locks, and several swing bridges. We worked together well

Aldermaston

10.5 miles and 11 locks today. We set off at 7:05. It was warmish then, but has got much hotter, peaking at 27 °C at around 4:30. Last time we came this way we got exhausted on this stretch as we tried to do too much. Today we have taken it easier. The river through

Still here

Not moved today. Actually that’s not quite correct. We pulled forward into the space vacated by the boat infront in order to move a little further from the busy road. The day was spent wandering arounf Reading and going for an 8+ mile bike ride upstream for a while, then down to Sonning lock and

Reading Gaol

Our original intention was to stop at Wallingford last night, which is more like half way between Oxford and Reading. But in the past we have found it difficult to get a mooring at Wallingford, hence the decision yesterday to stay a Abingdon. However that made for a longer day today as our Thames licence

Abingdon

Just a quiet tootle down the Thames today. We didnt really need to but we made our usual  start at about 7:30. Out through Isis lock to the Thames. At that hour the lock keepers aren’t on duty, so it was Abingdon lock before we had to hand over cash for our licence. We are