Saturday 23rd October

It poured with rain during the night which woke us both up but by the time we got up it was blue sky and sunshine :-) We set off but unfortunately we did have a drizzly morning. When we got to Ufton swing bridge we stopped an examined where I had fallen in. I still can’t work out how I managed it but I did! I was very surprised, though, to discover that the depth of the water was only 6 feet – I would have thought with it being so shallow that I would have hit the bottom but I certainly don’t remember doing so. (The pole in the photos on the right shows the depth of the water where I fell in!) One lock, Towney Lock, was in a very bad state of repair and I've marked it on the map as "awful lock"! We have noticed though that BW have been cutting down overhanging trees along this stretch of the canal – it does make such a difference. We stopped for lunch at Aldermaston – mainly because it was drizzling very hard! As we went through Aldermaston Lock we were joined by a hire boat just out of Reading Marine. We did four locks and three swing bridges with them before we stopped for the night. The crew were a husband and wife and his father. The father comes from Portsmouth and the husband is the mechanic and coxwain at Dover RNLI - small world!