Beale Park to Wallingford
8.25 Miles 2 Locks.
Tuesday. I was up at 7 o'clock this morning and gave Tom Hill, the owner of fuel boats Archemedes and Ara a call, " High Tom what time are you starting today, we need fuel, we are the 5th boat up stream when you come out of the Lake" he replied " OK will see you in about 30 mins", problem was they came out of the Lake and turned down stream, 3 hours later they came past going up stream as they had more customers up there, it was a good job we had decided to leave on Wednesday because every time he stopped to fill a boat all the other boats around wanted filling as well, by the time they got to us they had virtually sold out, their fuel tank holds 4000 litres so they had been busy, they also sold 3 tons of coal. While all this was going on the Festival dismantling carried on, the boarding gantry's that had been built to aid access to boats were taken down as well so we had to resort to using our gangplank.
The Festival site being dismantled
Wednesday. The fuel boat had arranged to be re-filled at Pangbourne on Wednesday morning so at midday we got our Diesel tanks filled, the boat moored on the outside of us had a fill up as well, then moved off upstream, we followed about 45 minutes later.
Coal and Diesel boat Archemedes sits low in the water, it's carrying 25 tons of coal and 4000 ltrs of Diesel
One of the larger Dutch Barges leaves the Festival site on Wednesday.
Today was perfect cruising weather, sunny with virtually no wind and hardly any other boats around.
The gates of Goring Lock open for No Direction to enter.
The first Lock was Goring where the Lock keeper was very helpful and used a boat hook (a long wooded shaft with a hook fitted to the end) to take the front rope from Jayne which saved her throwing it around the mooring bollard he then came to the rear of the boat and took the stern rope from me, Goring was closely followed by Cleeve Lock which has a very small rise of 2 feet 3 inches, after exiting the Lock we stopped at the water hose to fill our water tank, the boat that we shared the Lock with came along side and took on water too, fortunately there were 2 hoses, during the 30 or so minutes it took to fill the water tank only 3 other boats used the Lock.
The veiw up stream from Cleeve Lock, perfect conditions
No problems when it was It controlled by the Thames Conservancy
We are now moored at Wallingford on the Town Wharf moorings, the town council charge £5 for overnight moorings which is OK, this will be the first time we will have paid to moor on the Thames which is good going as most moorings are charged for, even the bank of a farmers field. We are breasted up (moored along side) next to 2 other boats, they are moving off at 8 in the morning and we will then move over to moor by the wall so we will probably end up paying the fiver. I walked into the town after we had moored to check if there was a Fish and Chip shop, but the pub by the River about 100 yards along the bank were doing 2 meals for £10, which was cheaper than Fish and Chips anyway so I didn't go any further, it is the first Pub meal we have had since July 18th as the pubs around London didn't appeal to us.
There is also a Waitrose store in the town so that is a job for Tomorrow.
Moored at Wallingford
2 comments:
Do you only get charged if you are the one against the bank then?
The sign by the moorings says that you all get charged £5.
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