Farewell.

5 Locks 17 Miles. Now moored at Reading.
345 locks, 492 miles, 16 Tunnels and 8 lift bridges since Nov 2006

We were up bright and early for the run down to Reading. A lovely clear blue sky to see us on our way and the river had dropped further over night. The leadways into Cleeve and Goring locks were tricky as the weirs pull you out away from the lock and at the latter the weir pulled us sideways very fast and slammed us into the pontoon prior to the lock. The exits from some of the locks were not much better as the large weirs were still pushing through a lot of water requiring a fair amount of power to negotiate through them.

As we came down the stretch of the river from Marlow lock we were treated to an aerobatic display par excellence by an RAF trainer aircraft which obviously was not being flown by a novice, possibly a Red Arrow pilot, as he was stalling, barrel rolls, loop the loop and flying upside down, the whole repertoire. When he came out of a stall which appeared to be directly overhead, he came straight down towards us pulling out at a very low altitude. Needless to say we all had our eyes glued onto this guy with just an occasional look at where we were going. Luckily the river was very wide and there were no other boats about.
After a good run we arrived in Reading and found that the city council allow you 3 hours mooring free then charge £4.65 for overnight. As we had only stopped to drop off our guests, Wilma & Bunty so they could catch a train back to London we only stayed for the 3 hours.

We then moved down through Caversham lock where we sought the lock keepers advice on moorings and the Kennett and Avon because we will be staying here for 7 days as Dot is going to London next Saturday to see Tracey and the dress rehearsal of Trooping the Colour. We will probably make a concerted effort on the Kennett and Avon a week Monday.
We are now moored just below the Tesco moorings breasted up 3 deep with Narrowboats Zanzibar and Derek and Christina on Kalimera as moorings are at a premium at the moment.

We have been advised to wait out on the Thames at least overnight as the Kennett and Avon is running just as fast as the Thames and because it is narrower it is quite fierce.
Unfortunately there is a dark black cloud bank heading our way so I hope we don’t get too much more rain.