The toll on R’s back from doing all the locks has become evident as he has been groaning away and happy to swallow anti-inflammatries, so it must be bad. So I decided it was my turn to stop being such a wimp and get going on moving those lock gates. My first lock was after the Globe Pub but before mooring up in Leighton Buzzard proper, outside of Tesco’s where they have shoppers mooring. It wasn’t too bad an experience except I just don’t know where people find the energy to open the gates on their own. Brute force is needed. Luckily there were a couple of nice young lads who helped me! We called in at a marina to buy a canal map for Guildford, hoping that we will be able to get near to home for a while. All depends on the Thames water flow. I jumped off the boat and grabbed the mid robe to pull the boat in and move it along from a red cone saying “don’t park here”. However the rope was caught and my lassooing skills are not great so by the time I had tried to free the rope from the obstacle on top of the boat, a very irate man came and berated me for stopping at the red cone. In fairness to him he did then sort my rope out and explained that the redcone indicated an outflow into the canal that could rock a boat considerably and dump water onto the engine compartment thus flooding the engine. Another lesson learned! So on to Tesco, where we moored up and R started talking to a fisherman right next to our boat. Infact he originally talked to us because he wanted R to rescue his ‘float’ that had caught in a tree on the opposite bank. R thought he said ‘coat’ and just couldn’t understand what he was on about. As he was trying to reverse the boat at the time into this tight space that we had overshot, it wasn’t the best time to distract him! However R and the fisherman got on famously. We even made him a cup of tea and I left the two of them to it as I went off to the laundrette to pick up all the lovely clean washing. Amazing how a laundrette becomes such a welcome sight!
My second lock was fairly eventful. We needed to moor up in a place where there was internet as we had booked to have a video call with some friends but the edges of the bank were not suitable for mooring. They were too stony so we had to plough on. The weather was becoming a bit inclement and we knew there was a lock coming up. Just as we arrived at it thunder, lightening, hail and rain all intermingled. I got a proper soaking and it was quite hairy walking across the lock gates to open and shut the paddles. However I feel if I could manage a lock in those conditions, hopefully subsequent ones will appear easier! Eventually, after yet another lock, but by then the weather had considerably improved, we found a mooring with internet and settled down for a nice warm bath, a gin and tonic and a good natter with friends. We managed to stay awake until 9.30pm, an improvement on the night before!
NarrowboatTLC 