Return To Froud
When we left the boat on second July we had intended to return just over a week later. As usual when we visit home, there were a few appointments and chores that would need doing, not least Archie's haircut, and a childcare trip to Tonbridge over the weekend in the middle of it. We had made arrangements to leave the boat again in Newbury Marina on Monday, fifteenth July.
This was awkward timing, making just about five days back on board and with Newbury only a few hours cruising further on. On further reflection, especially given our favourable impression of Froud's Bridge, we decided we would not return but leave the boat there for the duration. That meant more time to kill at home but it worked out well, as we were able fit in an overnight trip to Bury St. Edmunds, where we met up with some of Sue's family and also attend a little reunion for a group of us who had visited Switzerland together a few years ago.
We enjoyed a pleasant week in Devon at an old favourite, self-catering, cottage on The Quay at Lympstone. Jen, Dave and Elsie joined us for a few days and after our first day, which was horrendous, the weather was kind.
Archie Admiring The View From The Cottage
"Seahorses" Mean Something Different In The Exe Estuary
The railways were not so helpful. We had found that a replacement bus service would be in place from Leamington Spa all the way to Oxford from twenty-seventh July onwards. That meant we had to leave the cottage a day early, to be able to travel back to Aldermaston on Friday twenty-sixth July, with just a few hours overnight to clear up at home.
We managed the various journeys with not much trauma and stopped for lunch at the nice little café / tearoom at Aldermaston Wharf before undertaking the half-hour walk along the towpath, with our baggage, to the marina. The boat was safe and sound and the obligatory Sainsbury's delivery was there in good time. With everything stowed away, we were all set to tackle the next leg on Saturday morning.
Woolhampton Rowbarge
Setting out on Saturday morning was fairly painless, apart from paying the mooring fees! Coming out of the marina we turned right along the short arm to the T-junction with the main navigation. Sure enough, stationed on the bow, Sue indicated that there was another boat coming up, so we backed off to let 'Sandra' pass, then moved out to follow them up. We didn't know why they were moving so slowly but then we got a tip from a passer by, who was walking back along the towpath, that a queue had formed at the next swing bridge.
Things sorted themselves out with the boats ahead and we were ready to proceed. Our navigation notes said that there was a very strong cross-current between the swing bridge and Old Woolhampton Lock. One should not proceed through the bridge until the lock was prepared to enter. Despite some scepticism from the boat ahead of us and even in the beautiful calm, sunny conditions, this proved to be sound advice. 'So Long', the boat that, by then, was moored behind and ready to follow us in soon discovered why. The incoming stream from the left deals a boat a hefty side-swipe at just the wrong moment. If the lock is not open to allow you to power into it, the current will just pin you to the far side of the pound. As it was, 'So Long' made it across but needed to use so much throttle to get into the lock chamber that he had no control and gave us a good clout as he came in. Welcome back to the Kennet & Avon!
That one mile was enough for one day. There was a forty-eight hour mooring above the lock that was full but we found a space just beyond that. It was overgrown and shallow and we ended up on a bit of a slant but it was good enough.
We enjoyed a walk around the local area in the afternoon and I went up to look at Woolhampton, itself. Below Woolhampton Lock you can cross the Woolhampton Swing Bridge and walk three hundred yards up Station Road to the centre of Woolhampton, which sits squarely on the main A4 trunk road. On the way you cross the railway at the station which, I was surprised to see, was called Midgham Station. As Midgham is just a tiny hamlet nearly two miles away, I tried to find out why the station was not called Woolhampton Station. It seems that it was originally called Woolhampton Station but was renamed in eighteen seventy-three, apparently to avoid any possible confusion with Wolverhampton Station, just one hundred and twenty miles away.
There wasn't much more to see. At the busy crossroads across the A4, there is a pub called The Angel, now a Vintage Inn. On this side, one corner of the junction houses a small corner shop, that was closed. The main feature, on the opposite corner, is the Victoria Memorial Fountain commemorating Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.
Woolhampton's Victoria Memorial Fountain
Restored in two thousand and eleven it seems to have been maintained in good condition since then, despite the traffic signs stacked around it. The only other notable feature was the Village Hall, which looked busy, well-equipped and well cared for.
As the Rowbarge Inn was just by the lock, we went up for a drink before dinner. On a fine summer's Saturday, like today, they must have been inundated all day but they seemed to be coping well, tables were cleared, drinks were being served, meals were being cooked outside, as well as in and it still seemed quite calm and relaxed.
We stayed at Woolhampton through a hot, rather oppressive, Sunday. Through the afternoon we seemed to get pulled into lots of little incidents. We came back from a walk to find the boat listing quite noticeably, as the traffic passing through the lock seemed to have lowered the pound. We fixed that easily enough by putting out the gangplank and pushing the boat away from the bank to float level. Later on, we found a large, black water container floating in the cut behind our boat. We pulled it out and put it on the side. Less than half an hour later it had disappeared. Along came a lady who was moored just around the bend and had lost her boat pole overboard. She was looking to see if it was floating down towards the lock and we joined the search for a while, which ended successfully. Finally, we found two young lads on the towpath, who started asking lots of strange questions about owning and living on a narrowboat. They had come from the direction of the pub and had clearly spent a lot of time in there before walking up this way. We did go back down there ourselves before dinner. They didn't seem to have managed the Sunday rush quite so well. Long queues at the bar, tables not cleared and a general after-party feel.
Romantic Dining In Thatcham
We managed a whole two and a half miles and three locks on Monday, to arrive at Thatcham and a free space on the forty-eight hour mooring there. It was another very sunny day and the locks proved extremely leaky, heavy and slow. An arm of the Kennet flows in just beyond the visitor mooring and with a rising wind added to the current, we had some interesting moments attempting to reverse into the mooring. At one point the boat was completely across on the opposite bank but in the end we hauled it in. We weren't the only ones to find ourselves in that position as we watched others arriving during the afternoon. Nevertheless, it was a useful reminder to ensure we went in bow first, in future, if we were pointing upstream.
We needed to go up into the town to get some food shopping but it was so hot we decided it wouldn't be good for Archie to be out in it too long, so I went alone. I did manage to call in at Pet's Corner, an impressive pet emporium that stands guard over the roundabout on the approach to Waitrose, to get him some extra treats.
Thatcham's Imposing New Pet Store
As is often the case, the railway follows the navigation quite closely and here at Thatcham we were right beside it and the station. That is not something that normally bothers us but here, the busy railway line provided a level crossing for the even busier road up into the town. Every few minutes the operation of the crossing gates would be heralded by tremendously loud beeping, warning pedestrians and motorists alike that it was about to open or close. As this was only a couple of hundred yards away it was really quite difficult to ignore. Overnight, this noise seemed to stop until about seven-thirty in the morning, although the trains kept running. That left us unclear as to why, if the alarm wasn't needed then, it was really required at all.
We stayed at Thatcham the next day and I took Archie for a walk up to Crookham Common and back. This turned out, as sometimes happens, to be rather longer than intended on a day which quickly reached twenty-eight degrees so, for the rest of the day we looked for shade and rested. It happened to be our wedding anniversary. Neither of us fancied the trek up into town, along one of the dullest routes through housing estates imaginable, either to find a nice place to eat or to get a takeaway that would be cold by the time we got back. Instead, we went to The Swan, just beyond the level crossing and had a simple pub meal there. The view was uninspiring, to say the least but the food was surprisingly good.
The View From Our Anniversary Dining Table
We tried to leave a bit earlier on Wednesday morning, with another very hot day in prospect. The first lock, Monkey Marsh Lock, is the other remaining turf lock still in service. We found that one heavy going and very slow but the next three were a little better as we headed up towards Newbury.
Next Stop Newbury
It seems incredible that there are no CRT customer service facilities anywhere in Newbury; it is such a big centre with a lot of canal related activity. We had heard that Newbury Marina, in the centre of town, had stopped providing services to passing boaters so as we were going through Ham Lock, on the way in, I rang Emma at Newbury Boat Centre, whose site is just above the lock. They don't have any service wharf so, normally, they don't offer visitor services either. We were in luck, however, as one of the boats normally moored canal-side was away and they let us moor up there, help ourselves to water and use their Elsan and rubbish facilities. It came at a price but it was a bit of a godsend as we intended to stay here for at least a couple of nights and some interesting information from Emma about travelling up the Severn estuary came free.
We arrived in Newbury and moored opposite the marina. The visitor moorings above the next lock might have been nicer but were restricted to one day. There were two day moorings by Victoria Park but we had arrived just as the Fair was setting up for the weekend and we felt we were less likely to be disturbed away from there. It was already one o'clock and when Sue had gone up to check out the mooring options she had spotted a Persian street food stall on the High Street. I went up to have a look and found the lady running it was trying to offload the last box for a knock-down price of five pounds. It was obviously meant to be, so I snapped it up sight unseen. To be honest I'm still not sure what was in it but chicken was definitely involved, in some form of wrap. More importantly, it turned out to be delicious and to be more than enough for the two of us to share.
While we were at home I had taken the opportunity to have my routine biennial eye test. As new lenses were recommended we then had the fun of working out how to actually receive them, as we would be gone before they were available and who knew where we would be? This turned out to be fairly painless. They called me from Leamington Spa on Sunday to say they had the glasses. By now we knew where we would be, so I told them I needed them sent to the specific branch in Newbury. On Tuesday, that branch rang me to say they had them ready for collection so, having moored up and had lunch I walked up there and picked them up. It is a shame that the success of this process seemed so rare and unexpected.
I did have a walk round the High Street and Victoria Park in the process. I also called at the library, which is now the only source of Tourist Information in Newbury but it does not seem to be a role they have truly embraced, so I came away pretty much empty handed and returned to the boat.
By now, it was twenty-nine degrees and really uncomfortable. Just below the towpath, on the side away from the navigation the bank dropped down to a path beside the River Kennet, flowing here as a stream in the height of summer. The area was completely shaded by the surrounding trees and Archie and I set up camp there for the rest of the afternoon.
Archie's Shaded Dell
Between the tree cover and a little light breeze, we managed to stay a bit cooler than on the boat.
On Thursday morning, we had a long walk out of Newbury along the towpath then past the racecourse and up on to Greenham Common. Greenham Common Control Tower is now a charity dedicated to maintaining the building, its heritage and links with the community. The tower, itself, houses a nice café run by the charity's volunteers and both café and the common at large were very busy for Thursday morning.
Greenham Common Control Tower
On the way back I went to investigate the boards I had seen out on the towpath for Mrs B's Kitchen.
Beyond the Kennet, below the towpath there was a strip of grassy park, then a football club and a car park before some big industrial units began to stretch away on the outskirts of the town. I followed the signs past the first building, a self-storage facility and round the corner in front of the second, one unit of which had been turned into an open kitchen and café. It was nicely furnished and decorated and offered coffee and various snacks and sandwiches with a Mediterranean theme, quite incongruous in the external industrial setting.
I came away with coffee and croque monsieur croissants for lunch, which proved to be absolutely delicious. I just hope they can create the footfall to survive so hidden away.
We stayed in Newbury for one more, very hot, day. Archie and I explored out to the West, walking up to a place called Speen and back down via Speen Moor Plantations to Guyer's lock to pick up the towpath.
St. Mary's Church, Speen
The main chore for the rest of the day was to stock up on supplies at the two big supermarkets nearby, before we set off into the countryside again.