Hinkley

Last night we ate at The Horse and Jockey, not a cheap meal but very nice. We may have over done it slightly as even after an earlyish night we both overslept this morning, Little piggies with full bellies comes to mind, this resulted in a late start this morning.
I am not normally bothered by boats speeding by but this one this morning got to me. We were ready to set off, engine running and Diana had dropped the bow mooring off when a boat came along from behind , so we waited for him to pass. He didn’t ease his speed at all,  Diana on the front rope couldn’t stop Harnser shooting back, hauling on the slackening stern line I couldn’t do anything and the end result was out mooring chain firmly wedged in behind the piling in a rearward direction. We passed the boat later, no one on board on the long term moorings at Sutton Cherney.
Today was forecast cloudy but its actually been quite nice but a bit blowy at times. We passed the site where CRT have been disposing of the canal dredging's and I took a bit better photograph, they have completely covered several acres of fields with spoil and have a rather large, dry pond in the edge of one field by the canal towpath. They are still moving the stuff about.

The water levels looked to have improved a bit and this spill weir is only a couple of inches down, hasn’t made the going any easier.

I mentioned the company boundary markers the other day, well this one shows that the canal is now in the farmers field on land the canal company has never owned.

We stopped for water at Sutton Wharf, there were two hire boats on the waterpoint when I stopped along side, I assumed they had finished watering up as they moved off as soon as they knew I wanted to use the tap, I must say this is one of the fastest taps I have come across. Because we didn’t want to moor at the wharf all the moorings were vacant.

We chugged on still meeting boat to moor for the night at Hinkley, we are a bit close to the bridge so lets hope for a peaceful night.

Today’s Journey

11½ miles with no locks in 4¾ hours.