A good morning!

We left our snug mooring at Cassiobury yesterday morning at 9am; I say snug because it took a bit of manoeuvring to persuade the silt to let her go!  Whilst George was busy I noticed that Iron Lock was empty and one gate was already open so I went ahead to open the remaining gate and then swapped with him as he passed into the lock.

The very picturesque Grove Mill

… where I chickened out and let George take over the wheel 

… for the many bends, skewed bridges and right angle corners!

That must be ‘The Grove’ up there.

With the sun on our backs but cold air on our faces we were enjoying the cruise.

Grove Bridge in the sunshine at an almost impossible angle with moored wide beams to our right!

No sooner through the bridge these canoeists came by us out of the blue just as George was about to navigate another sharp bend and where a large tree was well into the water on our left

… and then comes another sharp left

… under the turnover bridge 163 where much to our surprise again, the canoeists raced back past us again.

Did someone forget to untie the boat before attempting to enter/leave Lady Capel’s Lock I wonder.

Leaving behind Hunton Bridge top lock in the sunshine

… another picturesque scene whilst  the only other moving boat today which was really travelling far too fast passed us.

I went down to the bow ready to step off at our chosen mooring with the rope and saw that a boat had come free of its stern rope and was now across the canal, a couple of walkers had stopped too wondering if they could do anything, they could see us coming.

It was really windy here and was no use us pulling in before the boat without knowing the situation so George slowed right down and gently nudged the boat towards the stern to get the boat over.  This worked ok with the couple on the towpath waiting to grab the middle rope.

I went back to the wheel so that George could step off onto the other boat to tie it up on the bank.

I was now on Still Rockin’ by myself and needed to moor up with the wind blowing a hooley from the towpath side, it took two attempts but I did manage it in the end hanging onto the middle rope as I stepped off sending quiet panicked thoughts to George to hurry up and help stop Still Rockin’ from blowing away with me still on the end of the rope!

It was probably the speeding narrowboat that had caused the boat  to come free of its mooring but the fact that his rope was still tidy on the stern and not hanging in the water at all, that he was not very securely moored anyway.

We managed to moor up after all the excitement just before midday and this is the view looking towards our next cruising day.

Job for the day - sweeping the chimney!

Apart from a bit of a build up on the chimney liner right at the top which produced a very slight fall of grit into the fire there was no soot at all, brilliant! 

In fact, it’s been really a good day!