Through Reading to Henley

Saturday 15^th October, 2011

We awoke to one of those beautiful misty mornings which Robin has occasionally experienced when working at Capture.  The moon was still high in the sky above the mist and, as the mist cleared to give a perfect autumn day, the moon was reflected in the water.  Our narrowboating adventures have taught us that that sunrise and sunset are magical times on the waterways.

We treated ourselves to breakfast at Pierreponts in the village; you have to book, even for breakfast on a Saturday morning!  After two boiled eggs with Marmite soldiers (each!) and copious amounts of good coffee, we made our contented way back to MM and cast off.  The journey down towards Reading was beautiful.

We stopped at Tesco’s own mooring just past Reading, where we went shopping; it was so huge that it took ages to find anything!  We had lunch on board and, as it was a particularly bright and sunny day, Marion took lots of lovely pictures of the inside of MM.   We continued on to Henley, where we spent some time trying to moor up, as the moorings were quite shallow. It took three attempts to find a mooring where we could get MM right to the riverside – and the EA charged us £6:50 for the privilege of mooring in Henley – but then, it is very posh!!!!  Unfortunately, it took us so long to find a mooring that we were too late for Felicity’s choir’s performance of “The Creation”, a great disappointment as it is one of Marion’s favourites.  The sunset was beautiful.

19 miles and 6 locks – 5.5 hours

Total 57 miles and 23 locks – 21.5 hours