Great Bedwyn

After my traditional Sunday fried breakfast we set off from Crofton this morning at 9:35, me moving ahead to turn the first lock (61), another one that had to be left empty so it was against us, we moved through that one and at the next lock a wide beam was waiting so I was able to leave the bottom gates open for them, a nice little bonus.

The same thing happened at lock 63, things were going well.

Karl attempted a towpath mooring as we approached Great Bedwyn and I passed him as he was attempting to get back on his boat having failed to get close enough to the bank, approaching Bedwyn Church lock (64) I could see a boat almost ready to come out of the lock, lovely I thought, that will save me some work, and then with the lock ¾ full they began to empty it again, a residential boat owner moored close to the lock shouted at them and there was an ‘exchange’ of some sort, so I tied up on the landing and went to investigate, it transpired that the bottom gates were leaking badly and the boat in the lock thought he would empty it and try to get the bottom gates to close better and leak less, a waste of both time and water, but he had a go and shouting at him didn’t help the situation, he thought he was doing the right thing, so meanwhile we waited and the residential boater looked bemused at this waste of water from a pound (the stretch of canal between locks) that was already low, having refilled the lock they came out apologising as they went on their way, life on the canals is such fun :-)

There was a nice two boat gap on the visitor moorings and having not stopped here on the where down we decided to moor up and investigate the village (read pub for village), so having moored up and refreshed we went for a stroll.

A small village but it did have a roundabout.