Bray to Penton Hook 02/12/2020

Mark26

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Penton Hook T 07:30 12/12/20
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It took us 5.5 hrs to run downstream from Bray to Penton Hook today, including a 1.5 hr delay at Bell Weir Lock due to a faulty sluice gate.

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The river was very quiet, only saw one other motorboat moving and a couple of early morning rowers.
We saw more swans than humans in Windsor.
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There was some work being carried out at Old Windsor Lock. The EA had put out a notice about it a couple of days before our trip, saying there could be delays of up to two hours, and a lock keeper would be on duty all day to manage the site. Out of the 5 locks we passed he was the only keeper we saw, not uncommon at this time of the year, and certainly no problem.

We were extremely lucky as the workers at Old Windsor Lock were just setting up as we got there, and they said that soon the lock would be closed for the rest of the day.

We were very pleased to get through Old Windsor, we thought it would be plain sailing the rest of the way, but at the next lock, Bell Weir, we couldn’t fill it enough to get the head gates open. Two of the tailgate sluices were not closing properly and although the lock allowed us to open the head gate sluices, it wouldn’t fill completely. So we called the EA, who sent the Lock Keeper from Old Windsor to come to our aid. He did arrive very quickly after we made the phone call, the only reason we had a 1.5hr delay was that we spent 1hr trying to make the lock work ourselves before calling. We cycled the lock and opened and shut the gates with the sluices open hoping that if something had stuck in there, it might wash out. But all to no prevail.

The lock keeper saw the problem and took the lock out of public power, which enabled him to open the sluices fully, thereby filling the lock to let us through before calling out an engineer.
 

realslimshady

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Andover
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Do you know how long the work at Old Windsor lock is going on for? We should be following in your footsteps next week and could do without any hold ups...
 

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