Another fine day!

The sun is out and starting to clear the mist at 8-am yesterday morning … it’s going to be a good cruising day.

We pull away from the bank and Sue and Vic do the same

Still Rockin’ being winded (turned) in the river width

… taking pictures as we pass each other 

… and they follow us just around the bends mooring up on the visitor moorings for their Tesco collection, hope all goes right this time.

We continue cruising and on approach to Bell Weir Lock can see the blue sign which means it’s on self service (no grumpy git to deal with!)

We share the lock with this cruiser.  I’ve set the lock for the boats to enter and closed the top gates and sluices after the boats were inside and then walked to the bottom gates and opened the sluices there to let the water out so allowing the boats to descend.  The guy above from the cruiser then came to the controls to take over while I got on Still Rockin’ and he will close the gates and sluices once he’s exited.  He will need to moor up on the lower lock landing first though.

We’re soon entering Staines but we’ve decided not to stop here this time round

… Penton Hook Lock is manned today

… and we’ve gained another cruiser!

We continue to cruise to a place we’ve not moored before - Laleham Abbey which sounds as if it could be interesting.  We’ve gone past the mooring under the trees on the right of this picture so that we can wind again and moor upstream.

It’s been the most wonderful cruising day weather wise, very pleasantly warm for October with hardly any wind at all and this is the view across the river.  We had thought about staying here another day but I was hoping that there would be an abbey to explore but no, the abbey was once a house that is now flats so today we shall move on ….