It rained and re-rained, and then re-rained again

Friday 25th April

Today’s title was penned by Terry Darlington in ‘Narrow dog to Indian River’ but it seemed quite appropriate for the weather we’re having.

To start with, a couple of Bourne End pictures from yesterday afternoon.

                                                            

We set off from our temporary mooring at Bourne End, (not that one – the other one) at about midday. It was raining lightly to I togged myself up in waterproofs and set off regardless. As the rain became heavier we noticed that all the ducks had quacked off, moorhens and coots had gone into hiding. Just loads of swans present at the bread-chuckery area of Marlow. We passed through Marlow lock and decided to pull onto the visitor moorings for a lunch break hoping that the weather might improve. 

Lunch over and I did some overdue electrical re-arrangement in the water pump cupboard to pass time before setting off again. It was still raining so on with the waterproofs and off we went again. It was raining so hard that I now also deployed the ships umbrella. Up through Temple and Hurley locks. The keeper of the latter asked how far we were intending to travel tonight so we told him we’d be stopping before Hambledon.

Just before we found a suitable mooring spot on the Westfield Farm mooring site this lovely, but very empty, Salters trip boat passed us managing a nice speed against the river flow.

I spied a suitable location and wedged the bows into a tree root which gave me a lovely old tree stump to rope the stern to. Then, leaving the boat in forwards gear I moved up to the bow to rope onto the tree there. No sooner had I stopped the engine the farmers representative appeared for his £6 overnight mooring fee. He returned a short while later with the receipt. Real dedication considering the weather.

On reflection, this has possibly been the dreariest and wettest boating day we have had for a couple of years. Roll on summer.

Graham