After another excellent breakfast (dare we say better after purchase of non-stick pan) Phil had his first steering adventure taking us from Avoncliff for the first 3 miles or so – he acquitted himself superbly, especially as this included our attempt to emulate the Titanic by having water a couple of inches deep flow through the luxury front cabin occupied at night by Phil and Paddy. We’d cruised the couple of miles back to Bradford where after the lock we planned to take on water and make use of the facilities for personal clear outs thus saving the boats for night emergencies – with the age of our crew highly likely! Plans scuppered by selfish other boater getting to water tap first meaning we had to pull over to get crew back on board after working the lock a 100 yards or so passed the water point.
Whilst tethered to the bank waiting for crew and the two who had disappeared to Sainsbury’s for bread, Phil raced through the boat doing his best Corporal Jones impersonation claiming water flooding through front cabin. We mocked him thinking he was suffering from lack of alcohol (it was about 10) only to find he was serious. As it was not dirty canal water we assumed we had not hit an iceberg and so were not holed below the waterline but must be coming from our own water tank.
Fortunately we were due to pass the boatyard within an hour so phoned ahead for them to be prepared. As Garry and John were not back from shopping our captain decided he would stay ashore to tell them what had happened and walk with them along the towpath whilst Phil, Paddy and myself would start off – we hadn’t previously appreciated that Captain Jeffery clearly has Italian ancestry! As it happened the walkers caught us up within a short time and were able to leap aboard at one of the bridges. Brian then thought he ought to study the manual and found reference to pump switches in the front cabin. Paddy pressed these and hey presto the water stopped. As he immediately thought it was our fault he turned white and used language only previously heard some years ago when Garry found his train to attend cricket didn’t stop Taunton Saturdays.
Safely back to the boatyard the engineer leaped onboard and announced it wasn’t our fault as a filter on the water pump had blown and he set about a repair. Another member of the staff from the yard then appeared with a gigantic vacuum and sucked some 500 litres of escaped water out of the boat – it was amazing in less than an hour the boat had been dried and our water tank refilled. Strangely the engineer had said this was an incident he’d never known before although he had diagnosed problem within 5 seconds.
We left the yard and motored for an hour and a half to Semington where we planned to moor up for a lunch of bread, cheese and wine – some members of crew had been topping up with bottled beer on leaving the boatyard. They will remain nameless but it wasn’t me. After lunch we then motored on through 4 locks and 3 swing bridges to our night mooring opposite the Barge Inn at Seend Cleeve. The afternoon had been splendid with blue skies and warm sunshine.
and every opportunity is taken to save stress on the boat's facilities
Moored up at 4:30 we set off to investigate the two local pubs only to find the Barge didn’t open until 5:30. Undeterred we knew there was another (The Brewery) within a few hundred yards only to find this didn’t open until 6:30 – alien hours these Wiltshire villages keep. We walked further into the village but no other hostelry appeared so we made our way back across fields to the Barge for opening time. Sadly it was another Wadsworth pub with the most expensive beer of our trip but nowhere near the quality. So Brian, Garry and myself only stopped for a second whilst the others returned to the boat for showers and we then moved onto the Brewery Inn to establish a bridgehead for the evening beer and food – a great choice although 1 or 2 regretted the flirtation with the orange cider at the end of the evening – I thought it was fine!
A Swing bridge video - http://youtu.be/NY-Mjm2kP2Q
No comments:
Post a Comment