On the bright side I managed to sort out the formatting problem (on my own!) and submitted the revised version of the book and it's now all good to go, so I've ordered another proof copy to check and then hopefully we're off and I can start writing book 3!
We got away OK this morning after a good nights sleep despite something having bit me on my arm and knuckle, and they're driving me mad!!!
Although we only travelled a few miles today we did seven locks and at least two of them had the top gates open with the wind and so required shutting before John could empty them. When they are double locks there's a lot of walking involved.
The water level has been quite low and I don't know if this is because or despite the fact that we were going from river to canal with almost every lock. One lock asked you to leave the bottom paddle open so they obviously usually want more water to be coming down. It seemed to be quite a few inches below what it ought to be.
OK so what is strange about this picture? No? How about it I say that the lock was full? Exactly... no leaks! It had new gates fitted and they didn't leak a drop. I was so impressed. It takes very little to make me happy, on the whole.
The Grove Bridge,a rather attractive one that belonged to an estate and the landowner wanted it to be ornate, rather than purely functional. You get these occasionally and they are always a nice surprise to come across.
My rant today (I'm trying not to make a habit of it but it seems to be happening more frequently - I'm becoming a grumpy old woman) was these fishermen, who had taken up residence on the mooring intended for lock use. I was left having to hold the boat. At least I tried to but because of the angle of the lock, the water coming out as it was emptying suddenly caught the bow and there was nothing I could do. Luckily I was able to jump on the back and do some hasty, and rather noisy, manoeuvring to get it back to the right place. They totally ignored all of this, so I had a good shout at them, telling them that they were on the lock mooring and shouldn't be there if a boat needed it. One calmly told me I ought to have used the other bollard, which was impossible because there wasn't enough room between it and the boat moored behind it. They were eastern European and I hate to say it, but we've found the attitude of most of them along the waterways totally unfriendly. The ones we've seen tend to leave their rubbish where it falls and they don't have any idea about boats or what the tow paths are actually there for. They appear to think that they have a God given right to fish where they want and not consider anyone else. I sincerely hope they are not representative of the rest of their countrymen over here. Rant over.
Once I got in the lock we were inundated with a group who were on one of two community boats who make the canals accessible to those who otherwise wouldn't be able to do so. They were all desperate to help and John is on the far side explaining how to raise the paddles and when to do it. The ones on this side were determined to open the gates and it took a lot of me yelling "Not yet!" and John saying much the same thing to get them to wait for him to be on the right side to get back on the boat. It was good timing actually as the second boat wasn't yet in the other lock so John was able to run up and we went up for them to come down, we definitely didn't want to waste water on this stretch especially.
We were watching the weather carefully as it had forecast heavy rain for later and sure enough, it started to rain gently so we found a mooring and pulled in. I discovered that we're only a couple of miles away from the Warner Brothers Studio and the whole Harry Potter experience. I would SO love to go but obviously you can't just turn up so I'll sleep tonight knowing it's just over the hill from us! The rain didn't come to much at the time and I took Paddy for a walk. By the time we got back it had started again and it had just got worse and worse ever since. It's supposed to be better tomorrow so we shall hopefully get some miles done. The M25 is just around the corner and the M1 junction, so by car it's about 2 1/2 hours home. We'll be lucky to do it in 2 1/2 weeks! That's boating!
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