Welsh waters: Day 15

The strong winds arrived right on cue at about 8 o’clock last night, but seemed to calm down a bit overnight.  We’d feared having trouble sleeping (recalling the terrible night we had in the storm at Salford Quays a few years ago) but it was fine.  However the winds picked up again as the sun came up, and at one point we’d decided we’d be staying put.  But after breakfast things seemed to calm down a bit, and a couple of boats came down the locks.  It also wasn’t raining, so we decided to go for it.  We quickly got ready, I went along to the Elsan, and on the way back there was a rainbow over the boat.

Have to say the facilities in the Weston Arm are great.  There’s a full range of rubbish and recycling bins in the car park, and there’s a little building with Elsan and loos.  Having decided to go, it was a bit gusty when we set off, in fact as soon as the ropes were untied the boat was off the side and I had to use a bit of power to get round the corner rather than being blown onto the offside.  But once we were behind the hedge on the approach to the locks things were better.  Adrian had walked round, and got the bottom lock open ready.

We did the two single locks, both of which were empty, and then the lock keepers spotted us and got the staircase ready.

It meant we were up the locks in quick time.  We moored at the top briefly, so I could interview one of the lock keepers for a future podcast, as he’s been involved in the restoration of the Monty since the late 1960s.  We decided to set off again as the winds weren’t too bad, and turned left at the junction.

Going this way, the bridge numbers reset to 1 again, with a W to show they’re the western sequence.

Loads of boats had crossed the junction just in the time we’d been there, and we were behind two ABC boats going very slowly for quite a while.  I was able to check on whether the towpath was still closed between bridges 3 and 5, after a request from Paul from Waterway Routes, to help his maps stay up to date.  It rained a bit on and off, and was a bit blowy at times, but nothing too bad.  We pulled over and moored up just before 12, below the New Marton Locks, where there was a queue of boats waiting to go up.

After lunch we went for a walk up the locks, and found plenty of boats in queues for both of them, and that the crews were struggling in the wind.  It’s blowing directly across the canal here, away from the towpath, and people are having to cling on to ropes to avoid their boat ending up on the other side.  The wind seems far stronger now that it was overnight or this morning, so we appear to have got our timing right again — although we are being rocked around on our mooring more than we’d like!

3 miles, 4 locks.  (55 miles, 35 locks)