Caen Flight

Thursday was a miserable rainy day and I was so glad I had decided to do my painting on Wednesday.
Luckily by the time Anne & Keith arrived later in the afternoon it had cleared up and we had a reasonable evening.   They were to be our willing crew for the trip back up the Caen Flight.
It was an early start as we had the 5 locks at Seend to negotiate before commencing the 29 of the flight!!  Keith helped with these and then went and collected their car from the pub at Seend Cleeve and positioned it at the bottom of the 16 locks of the main flight and walked back to meet us.
By the time he was back with us we were still travelling alone, no sign of any other boats.
Just before Foxhangers Wharf they are building a new Marina...

When we reached Foxhangers Wharf  we were still alone but spied a boat behind and our hopes were raised, then a second one appeared, hopes dashed, then a third one, hopes raised again................but it transpired that they were travelling as a threesome, one long and two short.  So we continued on our solitary journey and were very glad we had our extra crew.

Flight of 16 ahead of us

After 2 locks we saw there was someone 3 locks ahead so Geoff went up to speak to them and there were very pleased to wait for us as they had been wanting company also.

Thereafter it was so much more pleasant.  Our companion was a lady called Jamie a singlehander on NB Flags but she had 2 extra crew as well so we then speeded up.

Most of the locks we could do in Tandem apart from the one where it warns you that the entrance is narrower than normal.

Click the link below to see us in action!

synchronised locking

We only met two boats coming down which involved one occasion of a soft shoe shuffle.  Unlike when we descended the flight and had this situation this was preplanned and went like clockwork!

We decided to call it quits when we reached the Black Horse pub, 3 locks from the top.   It was 1pm and time for a pint....so the fellows said!
A quiet afternoon followed, 3 of us were able to sit out for a while (1 was siestering...guess who?) and later after drinks on board we had dinner in the pub.
4.31 miles, 31 locks, 5hrs 59 minutes