An 'Interesting' Weekend

[viking]

As many of you will know I am based on the Kennet and Avon canal at the Eastern end. You probably also know that the K+A is a canalised river. Where we moor is in a lock cut so is not subject to much flow variation, so when I set out on saturday nothing seemed unusual. There are a long line of moored boats so I always go slowly past them, which was fine until I came out of the lock cut and onto the river. My forward progress stopped and I proceeded to move sideways towards the weir! Now it wasn't difficult to arrest this with some power but I have never before used 1900 rpm to move at such a slow pace - 1300 is more usual even upstream. Obviously the river was in spate, although we haven't had that much rain recently so it must have come from further west. Going through the bridge hole was even more interesting, it needed 2200 rpm to get through and I was almost sucked onto the towpath bank by the venturi effect! Now bear in mind that the K+A is a wide beam waterway with bridge holes to match and you will see that this was quite some day.

 

The rest of the day proceeded uneventfully, just a short cruise to Theale for the night. We have a solid fuel stove that we use for heat at night, but in the mornings we rely on the far more instant heat from the Mikuni diesel, Sunday being no exception. We were just preparing to leave when we noticed a wet patch on the bedroom carpet. We investigated by removing the skirting and found that one of the T joints to the radiator was leaking so we had a soaking wet floor panel, side panel, carpet and skirting board. It was only a low leak so probably had been present undetected for some time. I have just finished emailing the builder!

 

The investigations meant we left a bit later than we usually would but no matter we had no fixed plan as to where we would cruise to. Just as well really, we got to Sulhampstead swing bridge, about a mile further on, and it was stuck solid. This is a manually operated swing bridge and is usually one of the easiest to operate that you could imagine, practically fingertip control. But not today. I called my wife off the boat to come and give a hand, that made no difference. 2 passers by attempted to help. Again no difference. 2 more passers by arrived and with 6 of us heaving and pushing we managed to open it. (On the way back it was no problem again so it was obviously just stuck on something).

 

About a quarter mile from the swing bridge is a weir, as we went by we were surprised to see a boat jammed hard up against it. Apparently the torrent that was prevalent on Saturday must have been even worse the night before and this boat was ripped from its moorings and rushed half a mile down river onto the weir. Luckily it didn't go over, but it was also stemmed up on the bank and could well have had rudder/prop damage as a result.

 

When we stopped to pump our toilet at Tyle Mill, we spoke to some local residential boaters who said that BW and the owners were aware of the situation and would attempt a recovery when the flow abated a little. We had shared a couple of locks with the boat owners a fortnight ago, they were moving the boat to a winter mooring at Newbury but had run out of time and needed to return to work. They hoped to move the boat on sometime late in November but obviously could not find the time. They were a nice couple, I hope it doesn't work out too costly for them.( the ironic thing was that they had just moved off the Thames as they were concerned with not being able to handle the river flows in the winter.)

 

After our self pump out ( I wish there were more of these) we went through Tyle Mill lock and on to Ufton swing bridge, this time an electrically operated road bridge. I put the key into the keyhole turned it and there was a loud 'thunk' followed by a message on the screen saying 'power supply failure call BW, do not attempt to remove your key' Of course I did attempt to remove my key, but I couldn't the bridge had firmly 'claimed' it. I called BW and put the kettle on. And waited. And waited. No callback as promised so I phoned again. "We can't get in touch with the engineer, he is not answering his phone" After about an hour during which time the sun began to set we gave up any hope of further progress and reversed to the winding hole turned and moored up for the night. To give them their due, they did phone back and promised to come out, repair the bridge and return the key to our boat. Nobody turned up of course so I walked back to the bridge the next morning and surprisingly it had been fixed. No sign of my BWB key though. They promised to send it to me. Well, fingers crossed.

 

The journey home was fairly uneventful although I must confess to being surprised to see a hire boat out coming the other way, on a Monday in December in school time with 3 school age kids on board.

Edited December 6, 2005 by viking

[Sam]

Sounds like a good trip

 

The hire boat you saw.. was their a police boat racing after it to enquire why th children were not in school

Jon... told you not to nick the police launch to have a play on the water