Another beautiful day so…..

We woke up to another beautiful morning on Wednesday so decided that we would take a trip in the direction of Mapledurham and take the opportunity to “play” with the boat, see how she handles in close quarters and generally get to know a bit more about her characteristics.

Before we left we were visited by our resident heron apparently looking for his breakfast.

Soon after leaving the marina we passed through Caversham Lock where the lock keeper was busy re-painting his white health and safety lines.  During the course of our chat with him he told us that the river was considerably busy this week than last and no doubt it would be even busier as Easter approaches.

We were soon passing under Caversham bridge

and then on towards Tilehurst.

The lock keeper at Caversham had advised us that the next lock (Mapledurham) was unattended and that he was going to lunch at 1pm so we decided to turn around just before Mapledurham and head back to Caversham.

We duly arrived at Caversham Lock just before the keeper’s lunch break and passed straight through.

We had time to play with the throttle in the lock and confirmed that we experience a fairly powerful prop kick when entering forward gear, resulting in the stern moving to port quite a lot whilst operating in the restricted water of the lock.   Valuable information for preventing scratches to the hull in the coming months!   We played some more in the wider river and the kick was still present but much less noticeable.

We returned to the marina and spent some time cleaning the boat before relaxing on the stern deck and witnessing this beautiful sunset.