Who's great idea was it to leave then?

So we left Tewkesbury the next morning, it was grey, drizzling and cold.  We said our goodbyes to chums Sarah and David, they are on their way down to Gloucester and Sharpness, they have won best of house tickets to view The Tall Ships Festival, I am a bit jealous I have to say.
Now if you ever meet them, do ask Sarah to tell you her story about when she tried to light the aga that had failed.  Its a cracker.

We left Tewkesbury after being moored on the concrete moorings.  Nice bridge

Grey cold and drizzly, David regretted leaving after 500 metres.

I do like a nice bridge Eckington certainly is one.

Great stone colour, this one was rebuilt in the 1720's

So now Frequent Flyers to this blog may possibly remember that two years ago, when doing the river Avon the other way around, i.e. from Stratford to Tewkesbury, in the rain and wind we encountered problems at Nafford Lock.  Frankly WaL is about 6" too long for Nafford lock.  I said I would never go there again but I have been convinced that by doing the Avon this was way it would not be a problem.  

If you didn't know about our endeavours back in 2017,  you can read all about it    HERE.......

But here we arrived and I was a tad concerned.    So looking at the photo below you can see a wooden footbridge crossing the lock which has to opened before a boat comes into the lock, but of course from downstream it isn't an issue.  But this year as different form two years ago the authorities are asking boaters to leave the EXIT gates open, regardless of which way you are going.  

I shut the upstream gates first then opened the paddles to empty the lock and then opened the bridge.

Here is the causality I suppose now from three years ago now.  Then it was said to be unable to be recovered by crane as it's too remote.

 Well I am delighted to say that just as David told me, this lock wasn't a problem going upstream.

By now we had been going just over three hours.  I thought that with the cold wind blowing straight in our faces we would moor up at the first place available, but no.   We reached what was our very favourite mooring of the whole river, Great Comberton.

We tucked ourselves as far as we possibly could to allow others to join us.  But in the 48 hours we spent there I think only 4 or 5 boats passed with one mooring up in the evening of our second night there.

Glorious.

I started sanding down the cratch frame.  My only experience of sanding down is of my kitchen worktop.  A work top I now loathe and will be replacing.  So I started off with an achievement of actually finding the sand paper.  Several calls to my chief DIY advisor (David Lewis one half and a Boat Sharer).  I did it very carefully and sent him a photo of the completed job,  well Reader this man whom I love told me off good and proper resulting in the ruining of my nails and the following morning retrieving my electric mini sander I brought to do my kitchen loathsome counter.... He gave me several hints to avoid scratching the glass, ( I did scratch the glass) and to avoid sanding the paint (Yes you've guessed it) but at the end of the second day and certainly the end of my patience I finished.  More photos to him followed and he said it was ok.

I started splashing on the varnish, I continued to do this for the next six days and I can tell you I now hate varnishing.

I went for a walk while David slept.  While he walked close to the boat a woman had two dogs, not on leads and one of the scabby dogs ran and bit him on the fleshy part of his calf.  Its the same leg that he suffered the squash injury to.  The little blighter drew blood and quite a lot of it, there is now blood on my cratch cushions, his shorts and my T-shirt and subsequently my White Company bed linen.  I could strangle the dog and owner on that account alone.  I put my nurses uniform on and played Nurses and patients.

On my walk I went to Great Comberton's church.  The lovely lady doing the flowers and to whom I chatted to for 45 minutes said that there had been a wedding three weeks previously and this was the door decoration still looking fresh and lovely.

This was taken before I started sanding as the cratch cover is in place.  It's been rolled up for a week and now I can't get it back in place.... not at all annoying.