An Eventful and very Full Day

Sunday 29th July, 2012 at Caen Hill.
David not only girded his loins, but donned his shorts! "Is the world ready for those legs?" we asked ourselves!  We also admired his technicolour trainers (through sunglasses)!
There had been some rain overnight but the sky cleared to give a pleasant morning.
After breakfast, we set off just after 10:00am through the first lock of the 16 locks of the Caen Hill Flight. The locks come one after another and you are not allowed to moor up in the middle. We teamed up with Jan and Len, an Australian couple on a hired nb "Elizabeth." They have cruised extensively around the network and Jan was brilliant at going ahead and setting the locks for us while Soo and David worked the lock that we were in. M, still recovering from her fractured ribs, was forbidden to do locks and so acted as photographer and galley slave (her definition!).

At the top of the Caen Hill Flight

Half way down, there was a heavy rain shower that soaked us all but it soon cleared up and the sun returned to dry us off.  As always, there were plenty of "gongoozlers" (onlookers) watching our progress.  The Caen Hill attracts vast numbers of this species, particularly at weekends.
We were two-thirds of the way down before we met anyone coming up the other way. There were two boats together, which required some careful manoeuvring as the 'pound' between each lock is only about two boat lengths long.

Passing two other boats coming up the Flight

Only twice did we have to pause to allow boats coming up, the second time for a singleton, so we reached the bottom of the flight in just two hours! (The guide books say to allow four to five hours). Great teamwork!!

At the bottom, we moored up and had a well-earned coffee and then lunch before continuing down through the next seven locks, ending up at  Foxhangers where there are 24 hour moorings.
Soo and David said that they would like to do a bit of 'cruising' as we had been doing locks (twenty-three of them!) all day. So after tea and buns, we continued on to Seend along a lock-free couple of miles with Soo driving and David sitting in the front.

At Seend, we moored up for the night. That stretch of canal is fed by a back-pumping station that runs all day but is switched off at night. As a result the canal water-level dropped slightly and we ended up firmly aground and with a significant list.  So out came the pole and with a lot of rocking, pushing and pulling, we eventually re-floated into deeper water, where we stayed for the night.  To celebrate, we opened a bottle of bubbly kindly provided by Soo and David.
Today: 3 miles, 23 locks and 4.8 hours.
Trip: 165 miles, 152 locks and 135.1 hours (282.9 total).