Day 49 – Caen Hill Marina to Seend Park
An easy half day, leaving Caen Hill at around 12pm after buying a bell for my bike in Devizes and having my lunch.
Engine
As you may have read, I fixed the engine myself.
Believe it or not, it actually runs better now.
In the new smoother Bonnie, I took off through the gates of Caen Hill along my merry way.
Double parking
It wasn’t long before I hit some locks. There’s just so many of them on this canal.
When I went to park the boat before the locks, so I could operate the paddles and open the gates, there was a 60ft wide beam sitting, covering all the bollards.
I thought ‘they may be in the locks’, unlikely. As I approached, it became clearer they weren’t in the locks. The boat was abandoned. Just left close to the locks, with a sign in the window with a phone number on it.
As I pulled up, there was no-where to put my boat, and I had to tie it to the side of this widebeam whilst I negotiated the lock.
The only other drama of the day was having a row with this other boater about going into a lock alone when we had queued up together.
Bad locker
He offered no kind of explanation, just that he wasn’t letting me into the lock.
I opened the lock gate anyway. Just as things were escalating nicely, his wife approached.
“We’ve got kids here”, in the hope of not causing a scene in front of them.
“I don’t care”, I said, “It’s a double lock, you can easily fit two boats in, I don’t see any reason why you should lock down alone.”
At least she offered some kind of explanation “4 times in the last 2 days, we’ve locked down with people and bumped boats on exiting the locks. I just don’t want it to happen again”.
Well, it sounds a bit lame, but at least it was plausible.
I’ve never queued up with someone, helped them with the locks for them to jump in and lock down alone.
I took the excuse/explanation and left them to their locking.
Didn’t see them again.
Seend Park
Didn’t see any point in taking it any further than a couple of miles.
I’m going to get cycling again once it’s in the marina, which should be in the next couple of days.
2 thoughts on “Day 49 – Caen Hill Marina to Seend Park”
It’s great that Bonnie is bounding along well with her nice clean engine…well done you!!!
How mean are those peope…..they should have told you they intended locking alone and done the locking themselves instead of just keeping the lock after you helped…but they there are some mean and rude people around….or maybe they had paid thousands of pounds to have their boat painted and were terrified of it getting scratched again….one can never tell. Sounds as if you handled the situation well and left them to it!!!
Your picture of the boats in the mist is absolutely beautiful. I can hear that you are looking forward to your cycling now. Bonnie will be nice and safe in a marina and you can have a relaxed journey to Land’s End and back! x
He may have been rude not to offer an explanation, but his wife had a perfectly good one, as Mike concedes. Mike, I’ve walked by the massive staircase locks near Devizes – it’s amazing.