Bradford on Avon Wednesday 30 April 2014

First the good news, yesterdays 24 hr rain fall was less than 1mm so hopefully the rivers will start dropping again to their normal levels.
Last night was the best sunset for some little time, we were out walking and didn’t have a camera with us, but as the sun dropped away it was just a big red ball in the sky.

This morning we woke to thick fog which didn’t clear until we left  at 10 am. We only had one swing bridge  and no locks to negotiate today, but was probably the hardest bridge all trip. You may recall I mentioned that these bridges are locked in the closed position for boaters by a large bolt on a chain, the head of the bolt is the same size as a standard windless used for the lock, so no need for a spanner.  We often find these only hand tight but in 2008 a young girl lost her legs due to youths playing with a swing bridge. A report of the accident by the Guardian newspaper is available on line Here.

Several of the bridges have stop gates set in under them, the reason for this is so that if they get a breach on the canal the gates can be closed at each end of the section where the breach is to stem the water flow, without then the whole 6 miles of canal would drain. I don’t think they would be much use if called for today.

We stopped at The Boatyard by bridge 166 to fill up with diesel at 80p/lt for domestic, the best price I have seen in a long time and I could even pay on my credit card. I had hoped for a pumpout but unfortunately their pump is U/S at the moment. I had actually used less diesel than I had expected so far.

After leaving them there are really a lot more moored boats about and the first 48hr mooring we came to someone had removed all the 48hr signs so I was not even sure it was the visitor moorings until we had passed. We carried on into Bradford on Avon and have moored just passed bridge177 on the 48 hr moorings. It is very hand for Sainsbury’s who are just over the bridge, the down side is some chap painting his boat under the bridge and has been running a generator all day and using a power sanded. I can now see why the girl moored behind us moved down a few spaces when she returned to her boat this afternoon.