First trip of the season

[mlines]

Well we managed to get out today for the first trip of the season. We had hoped to go to Poole to celebrate the last day of no speed limit but the forecast cold and wind meant we gave that a miss.

Therefore we dropped it into the Thames for a shakedown cruise.

We were still wrapped up well (I even wore thermals!) but it was pleasant and we saw the cockpit temperature rise to 15 degrees in an open, unheated cockpit in the sun (I even have the first "sunburn" of the season)

The Thames website had the river on "Red" boards but we had driven past it early in the weekend and it was not looking anywhere near as bad as the website indicated. We had no problems at all, in fact locks were showing "yellow" boards and the water had a lot of "green" in it rather than brown.. The website now shows yellows across our area. Despite it being a Bank Holiday we only saw 3 other leisure boats out although there were a fair number of rowers. Usually Marsh Lock is to be avoided on a Bank Holiday but we were the only boat there going both upstream and downstream. We had the entire Marsh to Shiplake stretch to ourselves.

 

[byron]

Very peaceful.

 

[Mirror Painter]

Always interesting to see other people's trip reports. Thanks for posting.

 

[watson1959]

Nice one: good to see James practicing his skills, ready for his 2013 rescue services

We only saw one boat at Sonning: a 35+ footer (suzie something or other ) who seemed to have forgotten all about speed limits over the winter

 

[russ]

We took our first trip out this year. It seems so long ago that we actually used the boat so a short trip from Bray to Dorney and back was due even when on yellows. We only saw three other boats and one of them being the EA launch following us.

 

[bumperdump]

we were on the same stretch as witch way, in the afternoon only saw two narrowboats, saw more dogs in the water than boats moving.