Friday, August 03, 2012

Moorings, locks n towns (1)

We left the Reading mooring heading down to Caversham lock, round the bend past Better Boating and turned onto the Tesco mooring. As usual they were almost full leaving a gap between trees for us.
The rough bank is not really suitable for the popular shop mooring. When we had done the shopping two boats arrived wanting our space. “Sorry, not going yet, but you can come along side.” We helped them off across our bow. They were not long getting back and Rock n Roll was soon to pass by. Within ten minutes we were all off on our way again. Our boat still full of shopping to put away! Carol had worked out a schedule of locks and moorings to get to for the next few days.
The first lock through was Sonning then Shiplake. After that moorings were found at Popular Eyot tucked away among the trees. Rock n Roll had a plank out and Moore 2 Life went along side. Chairs and tables put out for tea n cake on the bank.  Next day we set off down stream heading for the next stop.
Through Marsh lock and passing Henley keeping left to avoid the rowing boaters.
Temple Island reminded us of our first visit here at the IWA boat gathering in 1997. “Must have been strange for Henley to see so many narrowboats lining the bank for a few miles.” The next lock was at Hambleden. It is all new ground for us past Henley. Then several big boats in the next lock at Hurley join us. It starts to rain as we get to Temple lock. The lock keeper asked us to move forward to let other boats in. Almost against the gates! In fact we had to move back to let the gates open. Out we go letting Rock n Roll go first then us.

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