The Grand Canal Tour 2014. A Day With No Locks

A Day With No Locks

An leisurely start to the day, as we were in no hurry to get to Little Venice. If you arrive early, it appears that boats spend most of the day being shunted around and just hanging about. All the moorings were allocated this year, which is a great improvement on last years fiasco, when boats of differing lengths were moored next to each other in the order of arrival, which is quite a waste of mooring space.

It is just over 13 miles from Bull’s Bridge to Little Venice and there are no locks to break up the day, so although the going is easy, I tend to find it boring. Zavala set off about 11am and I followed about 15mins later, so they were out of my site on the trip, but in radio contact. I made a couple of stops on the journey to collect some kindling and then to chain saw up logs that I had collected previously and were cluttering up the cabin top. I don’t think they would have enhanced the appearance of Stronghold in the decorated boat parade! I had met Paul Garner on Destiny2 briefly, who Brian already knew and Paul invited me to a dim sum lunch at his favourite Chinese restaurant, called East Pan Asian, in Alperton. It was an excellent meal and wiled away a very pleasant couple of hours. The restaurant is above Loon Fung Chinese supermarket (a worthy rival to Wing Yip at Croydon) at the rear of Sainsburys.

Following Tarn to the mooring...............

 

..............................closely followed by Zavala and Destiny .


 

I arrived at the Delamere Terrace mooring about 6pm and found that I was to be moored next to  the tug Tarn, instead of Muttley. It seems that they changed places so that Dorothy and her sister on Tarn, could walk their three dogs more easily than being stern first in the pool, accompanied by the milling crowds that would be on the towpath over the weekend.

 

I was busy clearing the plastic bags off the propeller later, when Adrian on Serendipity introduced himself and said he was off for a pint at the WarwickCastle. I said I would see him there shortly, as it is the Victorian pub that I frequented when I was here last year and serves Doombar, one of my favourite beers. Adrian was with a crowd of boaters that had moorings on the Slough Arm and had wanted to get to Cavalcade last year, but were thwarted by a collapsed bridge on the arm. As he commented “It has taken us a whole year to get here!”

I believe they were going on somewhere else after the pub, so I said my goodbyes and turned in without having anything to eat, having had enough food at lunchtime to last the rest of the day.