Our flight ...

Wednesday afternoon … taking a stroll

Canada Geese and goslings - could do with a caption for this last picture!  Any offers?

Thursday morning … we had another visit from Freddy before we left our mooring, he’s the Indian gentleman we met yesterday, he’d brought us a present. An Alaskan bear with a salmon.

We managed to get away by 9:30 and 15 minutes later we could see that the CRT volunteer had set the first of the Hanwell flight of locks ready for us.  Once down the top lock I walked ahead to set each of the 8 locks whilst George steered and the volunteer closed gates afterwards. 

Interesting information boards as we descend

click on any of the photos to enlarge to read better

It’s not at all easy to get all three modes of transport in one picture!

Looking towards Asylum Lock

… and looking back

There’s plenty of water about today

Two more locks to go and I can see that a boat is coming up, they’ve already raised the paddle of ‘our’ next lock which is now set for them so I’ve phoned George ...

to suggest that he pulls in above the lock opposite the boat in the until they’re through.

The River Brent runs parallel to the canal

Brentford and the Thames 2½ miles

Approaching the junction of the River Brent with the canal, there are always problems here so we keep far over to the right ...

… because the silt that washes down from the Brent brings the bottom of the canal right up to the top!(see the problems we had in November 14)

Safely through

The cruiser will now be escorted up the flight by the volunteer who accompanied us down.

Moored up and the bottom of the flight for a couple of days. It took us just 1½ hours to do the flight this time and 3½ on our own last time down!

We’ll stay here for a couple of days, we’re expecting a delivery before we can go onto the Thames and also with all the rain over the past few days practically the whole of the river is in flood with red boards showing at most of the locks.