The Hodma'dod: Rest and be Thankful

Well, we had the rest and now we’re thankful that we are down the main part of the Caen Flight.

The 2 day break certainly came at the right time. We spent most of it coughing and sneezing and taking medicine (REAL medicine not Scotch I might add) to try to shake it off.

Monday Sarah felt really bad so I went into Devizes to get aforementioned medicine and got caught in the most horrendous downpour. Luckily I was in full waterproofs and it certainly proved that they were - waterproof that is.

By the afternoon the sun had come out and Sarah felt in need of some fresh air so we took the dogs for a walk up Quakers Walk towards Roundway and were rewarded with some stunning views.

Tuesday was reprovisioning day and we decided that an early start on the locks the following day was in order. Neither of us was still 100% but we had used up our 72 hours on the mooring and after my bleating on about over stayers we didn’t feel we should stay.

So this morning after filling with water we left the wharf at 8.05am to start the decent of the 29 locks. As Sarah was still the rougher of the two of us and the lock gates were of such a design (see pic below) that she would have had trouble crossing the top gates with her bad hip she steered and I did the locking. Of course we were on our own no other boat showing any sign of moving and as Sarah was not feeling confident I was opening both gates top and bottom. I checked the time after the first couple of locks and if we kept up the same rate of progress it looked as though we would arrive at the bottom of the flight around 10pm. Not a pleasing thought. Also I have to say that some of the winding gear on the bottom gates is so highly geared it was taking 60 turns to raise the paddle ( I know, I counted them after about the third lock). At that time on our own and with both gates to do some metal arithmetic told me I was likely to be doing some 7,000 turns on the bottom gates alone by the time I reached the bottom. Thankfully when we reached the main middle section of the flight we were picked up by two volunteer lock keepers and made excellent progress from then on and ended up mooring at the bottom of the main flight at around 12.30.

Tomorrow we progress towards Bradford on Avon which we will hopefully get to on Friday and there may be some long term moorings there so a time out will be called for again I think.