Poor Paddy has had a bad day though as we were only able to give him one comfort stop, so when we got here, he got off, wee'd for his country and refused to get back on board! I gave him a good walk and he's forgiven us now.
We've been seeing lots of red kites in the last few days and I finally got the better camera out and managed to get a shot, it's not brilliant but better than the one I got on the Nene, for those who have been following this from the beginning.
The red kite is the speck in the centre of the picture over the tree, believe me!
Just a beautiful view of the Thames on a lovely (if still very cold) day.
These are an example of designated moorings - we saw some like this that were on private land that wanted £4 a night to stay there! Chatting to a chap in one of the blocks, he can't believe that the river authorities don't invest minimal capital in putting in some decent jetty's along the way, since it's been a leisure facility for the last 30+ years. He has a point.
This is the lock where I was having the conversation! We went in with 2 rather impressive plastic pigs! Apparently you can get 3 narrow boats in side by side in this one as it's 21' wide.
There are so many beautiful properties along the river, we have been in raptures over many of them, some with huge gardens leading down to the river, however this one caught my eye as it seemed to have been built high enough to avoid the floods, which can be quite impressive judging by the marks shown on the locks.
This is the rather unprepossessing entrance to the Kennet, there's a tree down that covers half the opening and you can only see the signs when you're on top of them. Mind you this is true for much of the river. There have been several occasions today when we've been cruising onwards, not completely sure which way the channel goes, they don't seem to see it necessary to tell you and this can be quite tricky!
This is the opening once you have avoided the tree - mind you there were some black swans on the corner and I've never seen them in the flesh before. I took a photo but it didn't really show them that well.
Here's the first lock on the Kennet, it's very wide and typically the lock keeper wasn't on duty today and so John had a bit of a shock doing it all himself, especially since the paddles were worked by wheels to turn on each gate. It was a bit weird being in such a huge space on my own, but at least it gave me a chance to use my wonderful long centre rope. John cusses it every time, but it really does need to be that long for the deep double locks!
Thanks to Allison and Dave we were directed to some moorings off on the right - we'd never have found them otherwise as again they aren't marked, we sort of guessed that the cream building just after the weir had to be the entrance and luckily it was! As we went into the side channel we spotted the boat we'd been moored next to at Oxford, so ignored the map that was wrong and took the first left and got a mooring which is apparently near the Reading Gaol. Tomorrow we shall have a bit of an explore.
Just for anyone in the SW who isn't on facebook, we expect to be at the Caen Locks by the weekend of 11/12th and then over the next week we'll be travelling down through Bradford on Avon, Bathampton and Bath area so we're hoping that friends and family will come and see us at some point. Just let us know if you want to meet up.
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