Newbury's Nice

Liam and myself went off train spotting with the dogs this morning, leaving Elaine on the boat.  When we got back Elaine was sitting on the towpath hanging onto the anchor rope! Apparently the boat in front had left and in the process untied our bow rope, so our boat had drifted across the canal.  Elaine managed to get it back to the towpath but the bow rope had got caught around an anode.  She managed to grab the anchor rope and was sitting there patiently waiting for us to return.


Once we got that sorted we were off.    The first lock of the day, a turf sided lock.



Liam steered for most of the day whilst we chilled ...

Spot the weir warning sign ...

Very quiet cruising, with very few boat movements.

It was a very warm day even the boat buckled ...

We shared a lock with Nev's old boat ... the kid steering it was 8 years old, he was better than most adults!

As we approached the outskirts of Newbury we spotted a Tesco store through the bushes.  Magic ... we were getting a bit low, especially on the cat litter front.  We filled two trolleys, one with 100kgs of cat litter!


We could even got the trolleys right next to the boat - better still, you don't have to take them back to the store, you just chuck then straight into the canal.

Tesco is through the gap in the trees just to the west of bridge 50 at Newbury.

We were held up by about 45 mins at the next lock as one boat had no steering so he was being moved to a dry dock by another boat, which blew off a hose in the lock and overheated.  No probs, all in a day's boating.

So into Newbury ...

We had shared a couple of locks with this boat - another one that insisted on tying his boat up in the lock, plus his missus told Elaine that you should only open one paddle - and not all the way at that....should take them about 2 years to get to Bath!

We spotted our Aussie friends from yesterday in this pub as we passed by, so we moored up and joined them for a couple of pints and a good chat.

In the evening we went for a walk around Newbury, also popping into the local 'spoons for dinner.  We enjoyed Newbury so much that we are going to stay the night and have a good look around the shops etc tomorrow.


On the way back to the boat we spotted this boat, all I could think of was 'Cadleys Flake' ...

This chap a bit furthur up was having a barbie, now would you like your meat smoked......or......

Cremated!