The forecast was for rain but we were up early (0700), walk dog, breakfast, feed dog, get the boat ready. Try not to make much noise as James & Rosie’s boats were very still. I hope the G&T’s plus the beer didn’t take too long to wear off. Very nice people. Hope we meet again.
Right, 3 locks to do here and then on to Foxhangers
I don’t think people realise that there are 7 locks before the Caen flight of 16 and then 6 locks after it. So quite a daunting task. And what’s more we had a hire boat in front of us which meant having to empty a full lock first before we could proceed. Viv had her work cut out doing these locks and it started to rain. Luckily, the rain stopped and so did the hire boat. This was as far as they intended to go – just to get a look at the flight and then turn round. Another good piece of luck was that gazing up at the flight we could see that all the bottom gate paddles were up – this meant that we were the first to go up the flight today as the lock keeper sets the locks this way. Hurrah, no locks to empty – just drive in to each one. Time Viv did some driving!
It does begin to get a bit tiring (Tim & Pru had an army of volunteers to get them thru – it was just us and a bored Toby)
It took about 3-4 hours but we made it to the top:
A brief lunch and then onwards to finish the final 6 locks through Devizes town and on to Devizes marina and home!
This is Kennet lock and that makes it Number 50.
All freshly painted (Princess Anne is passing this way next week) and now just a home run to the marina.
A tight left-hand turn into the marina and then a show off reverse into the berth (4th along).
http://www.devizesmarina.co.uk/