Tadpole Bridge Sunday 20 October 2013

Last night my Grandsons came with their mum for dinner in The Riverside, I must say the Barnsley chops were quite good.

Overnight we had heavy rain again but this morning started fine but cloudy. We set off upstream at 1030 under very heavy skys but slowly the blue started to break through. The bank was lined with anglers ready to start a fishing match at 11 am.

At the head of navigation at Inglesham where the Thames and  Severn canal joins the Thames and the river Coln, there was a lone fisherman set up in the shallow water on the left. I apologised to him as we arrived pointing out this was the only place we could turn, right in his swim, but he was fine with it.
I motored just passed the mouth of the Coln and reversed back in to it, the water is quite deep close to the upstream bank but very silted on the downstream side, as can be seen from the photo. I then let what little flow there was on the river take my bows round and point us back down stream.

Just above the Riverside pub there are a series of moorings and at one time the moorers obviously had wooden sheds to keep their bits and pieces in. Some of these are now really looking passed their sell by date.

By now the fishing match was in full swing, I expected it to extend from Inglesham to Half Penny Bridge but it actually went all the way down to St John’s Lock.

We were lucky at St John’s lock as a cruiser was coming up so the lock was full for us to go in. You are requested to leave the locks empty with all gates closed, this meant all the rest had to be turned before we could use them. Only a couple of them had keepers on today so we only used one gate to enter and leave, so cutting down on Diana’s work.

Between Buscot and Grafton lock there is a boat club which always strikes me as being unfriendly. They have these big notices both up and down stream from the club. I have never seen a fast moored boat, most of them are stationary.The fact there is no “Please or Thankyou” really gets my goat.

The lock keeper at Grafton told us that they finished craning boats out at about 4 pm yesterday, so they were probably finished before the storm came, or finished because of it.

As we worked through Rushey Lock it started to rain, really rain so we decided to moor for the night back at tadpole Bridge outside the Trout. Well I didn’t try their beer on Friday as we had wine so I can check it tonight.

When we arrived at the moorings there was a red boat already there, but down the far end leaving room for us. I never thought I would moor behind a Shell tanker.

As the rain eased another boat came up the river and slowing beside us so Diana asked if they would care to moor alongside which they were happy to do. Its a shared ownership boat called Zenith who are based not far from us at Wigrams Turn