A lovely drift down the Thames

Saturday am we were up at 6am and on the 7am train to Reading.  We were on the water around 08.30 and at the first lock soon struggling to get through as my brain wasn't quite following the instructions.  Before 9am the locks are self service so luckily before we got to the next one the lock keepers had come on duty.

It was a beautiful day as we charged our way 35 miles to Old Windsor Lock.  We saw lots of rowers out and about, gin palaces and canal barges - the busiest day on the river so far.

Our first point of interest was just outside Reading when we passed Marsport where we got taught and bought our paddled.  We then saw one of our canoe club members taking part in a running race - he even took time out to call us.

We revisited St Patricks Stream avoiding duck and goose babies.

We saw the sights - in the run up to Henley they are starting to set up for the Henley Regatta at the start of July (or that's what I assumed as all of the lanes were not set out when we were last on this stretch.

It was sunny yet no sign of Paul Daniels this time (he must have done a magic disappearing act).  We didn't like that a lot.

In Marlow we came across jacko.  He is the coach who took my BCU 2 and 3* canoe, my 4* training and my L2.  Seems that he must need to take some of the blame for this malarkey and it seems somewhat poetic that we sped past him as he did a leisurely trip.

On past Marlow, which we once thought was the getting off point after starting at Reading.

Through Maidenhead and we got to listen to an 80's music festival at Cookham (Erika next year leave the baby with your Dan and we hire a barge to sleep on and go to this).  We sped past Bray and the Fat Duck with it's egg and bacon ice cream.  Past Windsor racecourse and the castle was in clear view.

We just caught the lockeepers in action at Romney Lock before they clocked off for the night and we were onto the home stretch to our home for the night.

Saturday night we camped at Windsor Old Lock thanks to the Lock keeper.  An amazing spot which we loved and we must have been tired as even the weir didn't cause several middle of the night toilet trips.

We wandered to a local Toby Calvary for dinner and completely misjudged how hungry we were - eating less than half of the food we had piled on our plates (oops).  Then it was back to the tents, without dessert, a quick trip to the very clean facilities and sleep in about 10 seconds flat.

We woke early (planes and light) and made breakfast and readied ourselves for the day ahead.

Esther got a bit confused and thought we were on a nice camping trip and made use of the patio table and chairs for brekkie.

Back on the water we had slightly less miles to do aiming for Kew.  As we started the boat just would not keep a line.  We moved us, we moved bags and we were peed off.

We then applied a bit of logic and realised our stroke rate had gone absolutely bananas.  We usually hit around 70 strokes a minute and we were over 100.  We slowed it down and immediately could hit a straight line - phew - could have been an annoying day.

Today locks were our friends.  We have developed a system which means that they are where we eat and drink.  They come up every hour and so as we are waiting for the water to go down we shovel in food and some nice lock keepers even offer to fill up our water bottles.  A useful point is that in general there are loos at the Thames locks.

We had to share quite a lot though and some were jam packed with us nestling between cruisers.

To finish off the day we came across some officious little girls in a safety boat telling us that they were about to have a rowing race and could we pull off.  It was the university Bumps.

The PLA manages navigation on the tidal Thames and they had it listed as an even that would not effect navigation.  It did.  

We were asked to move off the river - we wouldn't as there was no closure notice and we were asked to move across to the wrong side of the river for navigation - which we did (mainly as we were almost off and that was the side we needed to be on).   Luckily the gents further down the river knew that they had no river closure.  We stayed well out of the way and watched the fancy dress fun

At the end of the day we were tired, hot and then had a nightmare journey home using a total of 3 buses and one train, as there were works on the usual railway.  By backside ached but seemed to go off with painkillers.  I never expected that the worst thing to get used to would be the sitting.

Oh well - something similar for the next 2 weekends and maybe the ass ache will wear off.