Newbury (part 2)

Lat/Long N51.40159 W001.31627

Map reference  SU 47660 67179

Distance 0.4 miles

Total 331 Locks 8 Tunnels

Running total mileage 469.3 miles

Whilst I said that there are worse place to be broken down than Newbury, it seems that we will be staying here a bit longer than I wished. The boat engineer advised me that the alternator that had been delivered was the wrong one (a 55amp instead of a 70amp) so now we will have to stay until at least Monday whilst the correct one is delivered (hopefully!!).  Since we have pretty much overstayed our welcome on the 24 hour moorings I decided to disable the alternator and move through Newbury to the 14 day moorings below the lock. This involved the quite interesting bit through the bridges of Newbury. The first one by the Lock,Stock and Barrel pub is where the river and canal meet, just to add to the challenge it all narrows as well so that the flow speeds up to a fast walking pace. This means that you need to power the boat a bit faster than that otherwise you have no steering, so the result is that you pop through the middle of Newbury at quite a respectable rate of knots given how narrow it is. It all went pretty much to plan with no dramas, these things always look worse than they are, but the photos of the challenging bits are below (along with Newbury Wharf).

For those with an interest in my location I’ve now attached the Lat/Long on the top of the blog, if you cut and paste this into Google Maps (excluding the words 'Lat/Long') it will show a little red marker of where I am.

The view from downstream of the bridge

The view from Newbury Lock (this is where it all converges)

Newbury Wharf