It was a lovely day for cruising as we slowly moved south to Catherine de Barnes. We both had a small chuckle approaching Stockfield Road Bridge where there were two moored narrowboats breasted up. The outer boat was tied to the inside one, however there was a gap between them where we could see a woman standing on a temporary floating pontoon made from a timber pallet. She appeared to be painting the side of the boat. A male appeared and noticed us approaching and promptly turned around disappearing from sight. We dropped our speed to tick-over not wanting to unbalance the woman on the floating pallet. Then a horizontally held long wooden pole appeared from the bank with a large rough painted sign on the end saying “SLOW DOWN”. There was the male holding the sign hidden behind a tree. When he realised we were doing tick-over he promptly withdrew the sign and again disappeared! There’s no photo because we were too busy giggling.
It actually proved difficult to do much more than tick-over during the cruise as the bottom is very close to the top. About halfway through the cruise we passed NB Chyandour heading in the opposite direction. The first moving boat we have seen in six days!
Whilst much of the cruise was through an urban environment you wouldn’t have realised that as the canal is lined with trees on both banks. From what was being churned up by the propeller I think the depth of the canal is a result of the foliage from the trees.
There was only one other boat on the 48 hour moorings at Catherine de Barnes and it left four hours after we arrived.
The Boat Inn is over the bridge and 100 metres up the road. Looks like we have the Sunday lunch venue sorted!
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