Sell’s Green Monday 28 April 2013

For any of you interested in the rain fall we clocked another 10mm yesterday and its now raining again.

Yesterday afternoon a boat moored ahead of us and we helped them squeeze in,  we had moored close to the boat behind, but he had since left which resulted in us sitting in the middle of about 170ft of mooring. They were a Canadian couple and we got chatting as we eased back a foot and arranged to go down the flight together at 9am this morning.
taking a walk down to the locks we passed this boat with an interesting paint job, the other side is different.

It’s not vinyl but all hand painter. It is for sale on Appoloduck http://www.apolloduck.co.uk/print.phtml?id=340118

This morning I looked out and sitting on the work flat that was moored opposite  was the biggest Brown Rat I have seen in a long time. By the time I got the camera he was slipping off and swimming up the canal.

The plan was to leave at 9am but we saw our looking partners at about 8 and they said they would be ready for the off at 8-30am if were, so that is when we went. We met a boat in the third lock down who must have left the moorings outside The Black Horse that morning as the flight is locked overnight.

We arrived at lock 44, the top of the straight part of the hill at 0943 and this was the view as we looked down to what lay ahead of us. A lot of murk and light drizzle.

The locks had a good growth of small mussels in most of them and one a luxurious covering of weed, but looking back this one ended up with a small Perch on the upper cill.

It wasn’t long before we were at Lock 28, we exactly 2 hour and looking back up things were a little cleared. We had just watched the pair of boats behind us come through lock 28, we were in 29 and they closed the gates behind them.

We were told at the top of the flight by one of the volunteers at the top of the flight that you can’t get 2 boats out of lock 38 together, unfortunately we forgot which lock number they said, but I am pleased to report you can get two boats out side by side, but probably not with fenders down. A bit further down we met a wide beam hotel boat “ Wessex Rose”  coming up, slight problem, no one told the steerer we were in the lock so when the gates opened there she was, but she soon slipped back as you can see and we were away down to Foxhangers. When we opened the bottom gates the boat yard were playing shuffle the hire boat, so we waited until they had finished before proceeding, We said goodbye to our Canadian Locking palls, Keith and Paula who stopped at the marina, it was about four and a quarter hours since we left our moorings in Devizes. We carried on down to Sell’s Green visitor moorings where we called it a day on the 48hr mooring and had lunch.