Newbury, Kennet and Avon Canal

There seems to be one disadvantage of travelling early in the morning: You always come across an empty pound before someone else has been able to fill it.

This time it was the long pound between Monkey Marsh Lock and Widemead Lock. The picture shows how low the pound was.

We phoned BW and were told that someone would be out in about half an hour and that it was OK for me to walk on to the next lock and run some water down. No problem there as it was river above the lock, so lots of water up there to fill the empty pound.

So I walked the almost two miles to Widemead Lock and opened up all the paddles. About 30 minutes later three men turned up (see the picture) and studiously ignored me. Poking around with an umbrella in the puddles, looking at the lock landing and the black box on the other side of the canal.


Only one man spoke to me, the one with the BW lifejacket when he asked me to move out of the way so they could walk over the lock gates. None of them asked me why I was stood there with all four paddles open and no boat in sight.

Later on we came upon two BW workers moving a dredger and I mentioned the empty pound. The reply was "Not again!" So the other three must have known the pound would be empty which is why they never bothered to speak. But what happened to the man who was supposed to be coming out I don't know, 'cause we never saw him.

All in all it took us about 6 hours to do 3 miles, so it was great to draw into Bev and Geoff's Pitstop at Greenham Island. They provided us with a mooring (and electric hook-up) plus some diesel and we caught up with the gossip of Gas Street and Newbury.

I love flowers, and love photographing them. I wrapped some lilac ribbon around this photograph and tied it with a knot then matted it onto silver card which I trimmed with scalloped scissors. Then it was matted onto patterned paper then onto light lilac and dark lilac card. The four brads were then added before I stuck the picture onto a white card base.