Wednesday 29th August, 2012 in Hungerford.
A very wet morning, certainly not one conducive to cruising! Whilst we didn't plan to move on from Hungerford today, we did have to move to a different mooring as we were on a "24 Hour" mooring last night.
By mid-afternoon, the rain had eased and the skies cleared. R walked into the centre of town past the Town Lock and found that there was a free mooring there, so we decided to go through the lock and moor up there. Going through the lock we had a scare. When M was closing the bottom paddle, it slipped and the windlass spun round at great speed and flew off into the air. She got a cut and a nasty bruise on her arm and another on her leg from the flying windlass. It just goes to show how careful and vigilant we always need to be. Luckily no serious damage done - but a good object lesson.
When we moored up again, we found that the boat moored close to us was called "Eleytheria," which means "Freedom" in Greek. How unusual!
We walked up to the Tutti-Pole Tea Rooms, where once again the "comely waitresses" promised in the guide book were conspicuous by their absence but the quality of the hot-buttered teacakes made up for it!
Walking back to our mooring, we were even more suprised to see nb "Barneswood," another Kingsground boat that was being built in the workshop with MM and was launched not long before MM. Canal Boat Magazine had featured "Barneswood" as their "Boat-of-the-Month" in its January edition this year. We exchanged greetings and compared notes with her owners who are on their way down to Devizes before returning back to Oxford - so we expect that we will see them again on our travels.
R walked back in to town, as we had seen a shop selling very attractive wicker baskets and we wanted one to go under the steps to put our boating shoes in. Up to now, we have been using a cardboard box and it was getting a bit tatty. He found a lovely basket that was exactly the right size!
Today: 0 miles, 1 lock and 2.1 hours.
Trip: 239 miles, 245 locks and 203.2 hours (354.3 total).
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