Beautiful Goring and Dinner with Abbie and Dave.

Monday 10th September 2018 in Goring.
A pretty sunrise over Pangbourne Lock.

The Swan Inn was built c.1642 and made a very nice overnight mooring, surprisingly peaceful given the proximity of the weir.

We set off about 10:00am and vacated the mooring outside the Inn just in time for a cruiser to come in behind us to pick up a passenger. It wasn't that dark - just the effect of the camera looking towards the sun.

"Goring Gap", as it is known, is a lovely stretch of the river. R has always fancied this little cottage beside the river, miles from anywhere.

We found a very pleasant mooring just below Goring lock but were surprised to see that the Environment Agency (that is responsible for the River Thames) now charges for mooring over 24 hours. M had done a wash while we were on the move and was now able to peg it out to dry.

Goring is such a lovely little place. A bit big to be called a village but not big enough to be called a town. Just the right size! Not a great deal of traffic either...

George Michael's house is just yards from the church, tucked down a narrow lane. There are always a few tributes left outside the very modest entrance door, but there were far fewer than when we passed by a year ago.

From the river side, his house looks beautiful.

Outside George Michael's house, we met Mark from Wales on his way to a Ricky Gervais gig in London. He had stopped by to leave a tribute by the door. He had never been on a narrowboat so, inevitably, we invited him on to MM for a look around - he appeared to enjoy it enormously.

We had yet more visitors shortly after when a group of Australians, walking on the towpath, stopped to photograph MM and ended up coming on board to see what a narrowboat was like. They were great fun and there was much ribaldry concerning M's smalls hanging on the line, which had to be negotiated to get into MM. You can guess the repartee!

To our delight, Abbie and Dave were around today and in the early evening we walked up to their lovely house, shared a bottle of Prosecco and then walked up to "Tony's" for a super Chinese dinner together.

It was a brilliant evening, so good to spend time with them and to catch up.
Today: 4 miles, 0 locks and 1.3 hours.
Trip: 271 miles, 178 locks and 187.6 hours.