The Abbey Gardens to Theale Second Attempt :)

As you can see from this photograph, when you go through the Oracle shopping centre in Reading there is a traffic light controlled one way system.

As mentioned a couple of days ago, here is Fobney lock, you can see the annoying weir on the right of this photo.

Has anyone any idea what this is beside the lock? Please leave a comment if you do!

Nice hat Alex :)

Abbey Gardens to Sonning

This is where we moored last night, it's beside the old abbey ruines and Reading prison.

Although it was cold today, it was also gloriously sunny when we stopped in Soning for lunch so we got a couple of chairs out and sat on the bank in the sun.

This was the sunset as we travelled back to Reading.

Thames Water HQ to Fobney Lock

We left the Thame Water HQ mooring at about 11ish, as you can see it was still icing on the top of Sirius as we went through Caversham Lock

We decided to go along the Kennett and Avon, with the intention of heading towards Theale. Blakes Lock has quite an interesting mechanism for opening and closing the sluices.

Just after Blakes Lock you go through the centre of the new Reading shopping centre, the Oracle

This lock is just the other side of the Oracle, it's called County Lock.

We got at far as Fobney lock, infact, we got into the lock, only to find when we looked behind us, that one of the bottom gates was missing! Douh! This meant we had to reverse out of the lock and turn around, if anyone else knows this lock, they will recall there is a weir dropping down at the bottom of the lock which makes it extremely difficult to turn a 70' narrowboat in reverse, as the front side keeps being pushed the wrong way! We managed it in the end :)

Goring back to Thames Water

Last night we had a meal in the John Barleycorn Inn the food was excellent!
Today we headed back to Reading as Cleave lock is closes so we can go no further north.
The photo on the left is the Railway bridge between Goring and Pangbourne.

Just past the bridge there is a long straight section running along side Beale Park, you can moor at the part if you wish to visit.

Thames Water to Goring

Today started off as a bit of a grey morning as you can see, here we were moored out side the Thames Water's new offices.

A photo of the very smart looking Thames Water offices.

About a mile away from Reading bridge is Caversham bridge, notorious for traffic problems of the four wheeled variety.

Melanie at the helm :)

Just coming up to Whitchurch lock, where I had the joyous task of emptying the toilet! Crumbs, there has to be a better way of doing that... but on the positive side, the sun was coming out and the lock looked lovely with all the autumn coloured trees.

Yep, it's me at the helm now :)

Kings Meadow to Thames Water in Reading.

After trying to start a weeks holiday all weekend, it eventually started half way through today!

Melanie and I had planned to take a trip from Reading up to Lower Heyford, but, unfortunately this plan had to change...

The down side to a slow start in November, is the amount of daylight hours you have, and added to that having to stop for disel and water for over 30 minutes. We were lucky that the lady at the "Better Boating Company" took pitty on us, as apparently they are not normally open on a Monday. Unfortunately with the good news we could fill up with fuel and water came the bad news about lock closures!

Cleeve lock is closed! Which means we cannot go past Goring :( So there goes the idea of travelling up to Oxford and beyond.