17th. June '15

Phew! What a day! 9miles, 7 locks and 8 bridges (lift, swing, electric or not). 7 hours
The first two locks were not brilliant, wind, current and my lack of confidence from yesterday were all to blame, nothing desperate, just not that good.
However I got the boat around Woolhampton bridge and lock, that only means anything to someone who's steered a boat around it! My adrenaline levels were off the scale! Done without a knock or scrape, unlike one of the earlier ones, where I caught the back of the boat under a shelf before a lock, John had to get the barge pole and lever it off....oops, he's painted the scar.
We are moored just under Monkey Marsh lock, the second turf lock on the system. I'm not keen on them, they feel wrong somehow.
We've got our system going for uphill, double locks, with the boat hook and ropes ready.
All the locks were against us, as expected, apart from one where a boat was coming down. Just one lock, at Aldermaston, we actually shared a lock with a lovely couple, Ian and Jill, but they were mooring at their home mooring before the next lock....typical,so otherwise we were on our own, very hard on John.
Anyway the good news is that we're almost at Newbury, so it's a short day tomorrow and some shops! A quick warning for other boaters.... Moorings at Monkey Marsh are minimal and there's NO-WHERE to moor before Woolhampton....just saying...we're actually at the very end of the lock moorings here, we just couldn't go any further.....