We finally left the waterpoint and entered the top lock, the 1st of
the 30, at 10.45a.m. Lauren's finger had now sufficiently recovered for
her to rejoin the locking crew, and so we were able to set up a system
with Nicola steering, Lauren and I operating the current lock and Sue running
on ahead to set the next lock. This system worked quite efficiently and
we had completed half the flight by 1.15, at which point we stopped for
some lunch. Two and a half hours may seem a long time, but it had passed
very quickly and the work hadn't seemed all that arduous.
At 1.45 we could see another boat coming down the flight a couple of
locks back, so we set off again ahead of it. By about the 20th lock the
girls had begun to tire, so for the remaining 10 it was just Sue and I
doing the work: myself steering and sometimes getting off to push gates,
and Sue doing the rest. Strange then that we should have completed the
2nd half faster than the 1st half, but that was indeed the case, as we
exited the 30th and final lock at 4.00: four and three-quarter hours in
all, not including lunch!
Just beyond the bottom lock is the Queen's Head pub, where we had a table booked at 8 p.m., so we found a space to moor. This was right behind Bridgit - the crew of which scoffed at our efforts, claiming to have descended the flight in 3 hours and 20 minutes without a break. We were exchanging stories with one of the Bridgit crew members when one of the children from Bridgit accidentally discovered a wasps' nest on the bank. This caused quite a commotion as a large swarm of wasps seemed to appear from nowhere and started to attack the girl. Her dad came to her rescue and the wasps turned their attention to him. His only escape was to jump into the canal and everyone else disappeared inside their boats. We later learned that the girl had received 5 stings and her dad 15. They seemed OK however when we saw them later on in the pub.
The
meal at the Queen's Head was excellent and the price represented good value.
The carnivores of the crew went for the carvery and for only £4 Nicola
seemed to put away a quite incredible quantity of food! We returned to
the boat in good time for a reasonably early night, as I was hoping to
leave at 7.45 in the morning, so as to comfortably negotiate the remaining
5 locks and return the boat to the base by 9.00.
