Handy having two narrowboats in Hungerford..

Hungerford to Kintbury, K&A Canal, 3 miles 4 locks

After Tara’s outing yesterday she ended up facing west with the next winding hole (space to turn round) some 2 and half miles and 3 locks away.. ah but… having two narrowboats is handy!  ….

Now heading east! .. is this called piggy back ride? Teehee..

But before that, Lucy demanded I take her for one last walk across her most favourite area.. here I spied a female duck almost hiding in a tiny brook with her brood of 10 chicks..

The female ducks are really getting pestered by the males at the moment.. they just don’t want to know about sex now that they have their new broods.. being a woman I can understand that!!.. so they are hiding as much as they can with their littlens.. this one was enjoying the morning sunshine.  And as I went round the corner hey look.. here is Lucy about 50 yards ahead looking for me.. This is her most favourite ever spot on the whole canal system.  She is waiting for me to throw a stick into the river here .. she never forgets this place.. it’s been 3 years since we were here last, but she ran to this place on the very first day we arrived..

“Hurry up, hurry up”.. you can just see her saying that to me.  The river is running fairly fast, but that is no worry to her, she just simply adores it here…

Then a trip into the town for some supplies from the butcher and baker before we left to continue east towards the Thames.. this time we would be travelling on our own, Paul is, I think, on his way to his new moorings in Birmingham with NB Waterway Routes .. well we knew it would be difficult because still Vic is unable to work the locks.. Goodbye then to Hungerford for a few years.. here we have the two narrowboats tied together making our way to the winding hole in the easterly direction which is just that one lock and about half mile….

We stopped at the ‘services’ and dumped off a lot of rubbish and odd timber at the dustbins, and turned Tara.. moving the boats singly is much easier.. I quite enjoyed doing the locks and getting the boats out.. I enjoyed ‘single handed’ seeing the two boats through the locks and the logistics of doing that safely..  The only big problem I had was that there was quite an easterly wind which meant once I had let Vic out of the lock with Tara, then got myself out with No Problem, mooring up to go back and shut the gates the wind kept opening them again.. I gave up in the end.. so please forgive me if you are going east tomorrow morning from Hungerford.. 

We moored up at a very quiet Kintbury this evening quite late.. but I had put a delicious casserole in the oven to cook slowly before we left.. so it wasn’t long before we settled for the evening.  I think we can do this together.. Vic’s back is getting a bit better, and he moved around more today.. maybe that is what is needed..

We have planned to build the crossover slatted supports for the bed on No Problem tomorrow before we go on a bit further.. must also clean the boats, they are soooooooooo dusty still from the sandblasting at Devizes, still trying to get that off, plus the towpaths are now not muddy.. just dreadfully dusty which sticks to the boats like glue!!