The Hodma'dod: Progress at a Hodmadods pace?

After the openness and speed (comparatively) of the Thames our progress on the K & A is very slow and extremely hard work. On the first day we covered about 5 miles in as many hours and things have not changed much since.

This is not a canal for the fainthearted or the old and infirm so we really shouldn't be here! The locks are doubles so the gates are big and heavy, most of the locks up to Newbury only have gate paddles so the water rushes in at a tremendous pace if one is not careful so they have to be filled slowly, and I should think there are more swing bridges on this canal than on the rest of the system put together, all of them closed, some electrified and some manual so it all makes very, very slow work.

On the upside we have met some great boaters and are (in spit of the above) really enjoying ourselves. Our first night after leaving Reading was spent at Theale moored opposite an old mill house which had apparently been owned by Kate Bush and moved on the following morning to Woolhampton. Having struggled with the locks on our own that day we found that the boat that had accompanied us up on the previous day ended up mooring behind us. After chatting for a bit they suggested that we went to the local stores the following morning for breakfast, a bacon buttie and coffee which we readily agreed to.We arrived there at just after 9am " 4 Bacon butties and coffees please" I requested. "Oh sorry, came the reply, we open at 5.30am and all the bacons gone by now" Through my tears I managed to order 4 coffees and we sat outside to enjoy those and were rewarded when she came out a few minutes later to report that she had found some bacon so if we were still interested we could have them. So we did. They took some time to come. We concluded that first they had to kill the pig!

We stayed that day at Woolhampton and leisurely cleaned and polished one side of the boat and the following day moved on to Newbury, luckily accompanied by another super couple who were taking their boat to Newbury to have it blacked. Newbury is a very pleasant town, famous for its 3 battles according to the lady we spoke to in the Tourist information centre, 2 in the Civil war and one over the bypass! The moorings there at West Fields are delightful but unfortunately only 24 hours so this morning we upped sticks again or weighed anchor or de moored or whatever and are now at Kintbury having had to deal with all the locks today on our own. Treated them with respect today as yesterday I had a rope snap on me from the pressure of the water emptying from the lock whist I was waiting to go in.

As its a 48 hour mooring we will have a day off tomorrow to explore the town and hopefully get out of synch with 2 other pairs of boats we keep seeing. Its a bit like the Germans and towels on sunbeds. As mooring is very restricted everyone seems to be setting off earlier and earlier to make sure they have a space and with 5 of us after those spaces someones going to be disappointed and I can see it being us; so hopefully they will move on tomorrow and we wont have such a problem when we go.