‘Twas a strange cruise.....

.....but finished as intended.

I set off this morning with the intention of stopping at Sells Green but if no moorings were available carrying on until I found one, the usual loose plan, set a destination time for about 11:30 when hopefully movers will have moved, and stoppers won’t have yet arrived.

I had the five Seend locks (17-21) and two swing bridges to deal with, so I left my mooring at 9am, plenty early enough for that lot.

The first lock was in my favour so that was no problem.

Entering the first lock (17)

Approaching the second lock a single hander in a plastic cruiser was getting ready to go in, so I thought I’d see how he dealt with it, if he opened both gates maybe that meant he’d seen me and would share, if he only opened one then he wanted to do it solo, at least that was my thinking, he opened both and went in, so I followed but as I was getting quite close he made no effort to pull his boat to the side of the lock and was across it blocking my entry, I reversed back, he walked back to me and asked if I wanted to share, I said “yes but you are right across the lock, how wide are you?”, he didn’t know, I said I didn’t want to squash him, he said “let’s see what happens”, well I wasn’t happy with that, he had about 12 fenders down and I thought I would damage him so I said no, go through alone and I will follow on.

Second lock plastic cruiser about to move into it.

I tied up and helped him through, things then got weird, there was a boat not on the landing and not looking like it was intending to go down the lock (I’m currently going up), so I closed the top gates and went and opened a bottom paddle, as I did so they began to untie so I waved to try and ask if they were going down, no real response, arm signals can be useless, I dropped the paddle and began to walk towards them, they were German and new hirers and yes they wanted to go down but were waiting for me to come up, I explained they should go first to conserve water, blah blah blah, it took ages but we got sorted, after them I went in the lock, finally. Then two young girls appeared wearing life belts, they told me they were doing a Duke of Edinburgh Silver award, there were seven of them in two rowing boats (a 4 and 3 crew) trying to go from Bath to Devizes in 3 days and today was their last day, so at this point they still had 33 locks to deal with, I offered to share the lock with them but they didn’t want to so they helped me through, things did not improve, at the next lock another new hire family, they were very nervous and lacking in any experience, then at the next lock a wide beam hire family who had come down the Caen Hill flight the day before but were extremely slow, I never got frustrated, my advice to newbies has always been ‘take your time’ and this lot all did, so how could I complain or get upset :-)

Another dinky

I got through the first swing bridge without a problem and the second one was the one by the winding hole that had caused me problems coming down because of the windy weather, no problem today and a rambler offered to close it for me, I do love a good offer of help!

I arrived at Sells Green at 11:25 and there was plenty of room, fantastic, having got moored up and made a cuppa I looked back and saw the rowers approaching, it was now midday and they still had 29 locks to do, they were under crewed, it should have been 5 in each boat, I felt very sorry for them and offered words of encouragement as they passed by, the three girls in the second boat did not seem very cheery by now though, but I wished them all good luck and I hope they succeed.

Tonight’s mooring

Totals today: 2 miles : 5 locks : 2 swing bridges