This morning Cath carried out a provisioning raid on Tesco. While she was doing this I got on and did the gearbox oil change which I had threatened to do yesterday.
In the event I found that I didn't have sufficient oil to complete the task, so had to go to the store and get some.
After putting the shopping away we set off, with a probable goal of Beale Park for the night.
After Caversham Lock the first sight was Reading Bridge, one of the two bridges which join Reading and Caversham.
Much prettier is Caversham Bridge itself.
With some nice detail on it.
Just east of Tilehurst they seem to be throwing up a new bridge. It isn't on our maps, and I checked out Google maps for it. No joy until I zoomed in on the location, then the location is spread over 2 images, you can see the line where they join. The bridge is shown on one image, but cuts off on the next.
Next was Mapledurham Lock, which we had to ourselves.
Coming out of the lock, on the right is this trip boat, the original African Queen certainly didn't look this good.
Just before Whitchurch Lock is this Victorian toll bridge, looks like they're doing some work on it.
Whitchurch Lock is well hidden in the trees.
The village of Whitchurch has a lovely river frontage.
We've never seen a heron do this before
I wonder if they ever use the drop keels of Daybreak.
And now for the usual procession of Thames side houses I found interesting.
We did make it to Beale Park, and have a very good mooring. We were alone up until an hour ago, but now another boat has joined us and set up a BBQ.
Earlier I went out and found a good blackberry hedge, and I picked enough for Cath to make some blackberry and apple jam. Yum.
Here's our position for tonight.
The 'new bridge' upstream from Reading is being dismantled. It is put up each year for the Reading Music Festival as the camping fields are on the other side of the river.
ReplyDeleteYou didn't say anything about "loads of tents" in your blog, but when we passed there were hundreds of them in the fields on the right near the bridge that had just been dumped.
Tents are so cheap these days compared to the festival tickets that they just leave them there still erected. All will go for charity though!