5 miles and 5 swing bridges

Today has been a stop start sort of day.

We started out at 9:15 and breasted up with Cray at the water point and both filled up.

The rest of the day was dominated by swing bridges. We approached bridge 182A to see a queue of boats. We were told that the bridge was ‘broken’ and a engineer had been called. About 40mins later it was opened, it seems it wasnt broken, just needed to be reset.

On we went through several more swing bridges only to come up to another queue at bridge 187. This time it was broken. A vehicle had reversed in the barrier and smashed it. So we moored up and settled down to have lunch. After a while a van arrived with workmen who set about getting the bridge open to let the queue of boats through. It took a bit of organising with boats from both directions some widebeams among them. Also three boats (including us) want to wind just the other side of the bridge and come back through.

It all got sorted out and we decided to stay here for the night.