Boat Trip - Day 3: No Room at the Inn

Another good sleep. Even Ange sleeps well. French bread sausage sandwiches for boy breakfast and cream cakes for girl breakfast. 

Today is a cooler day for which we're thankful. 

Sonning lock goes like a dream. Shiplake lock - Shitlake more like. Well, that lock goes ok tbh, with a bit of help from a well-spoken guy with our ropes. He asks a question about how our boat asterns but we had no freaking clue.

Marsh lock is a disaster. We miss the opportunity to tie up the back, and naturally it kicked out and took 3 attempts (with help from the well-spoken bloke from boat in front, same guy that helped at Shiplake). Luckily no boat behind us to save some embarrassment. Man teaches me some skills which I use at Henley where we make an unscheduled stop to fix McManus's shower (not draining, too many ginger pubes clogging it up). 

The mooring at Henley went like a dream - span boat around mid-river and spotted someone leaving at exactly the spot we needed to meet the maintenance guy. Got in the space with no problems - apart from Lisa falling over comedically when roping up. She's not hurt. We drink tea on bench and wait for guy.

Shower was fixed in 2 mins and we tell guy about the lost parasol. "Ah don't worry, we have hundreds". He brings one from the van and scoots off. Result 😃. Then a quick trot around Henley shops and back to boat. I swear I saw Matthew Pinsent when walking back, but in hindsight the guy I saw did not look 6ft4, more 6ft. It really looked like him tho, could have been.

Our aim now is to get to Cookham and moor up for the night. It's currently 3pm. The plan initially goes well; 3 out of 4 locks go great. Pick up some more roping tips from a Scottish Lock Keeper at Hurley. 4th lock (Marlow) sees us waiting around for someone coming thru which takes ages - in that time the rain starts and we're getting short of time to find a mooring spot before dark. We are only ones to go through lock, which we have to operate, and then we travel for ages to Cookham to find a mooring spot. It pisses down and it's grim. I get soaked through.

The one mooring spot we see we pull into, but a bloody film crew is there and a guy tells us that they've reserved all mooring there so we can't stop, FFS. Your film looks shit anyway. We travel all the way back to Marlow looking for another spot, see one but someone else takes it. Then they abandon it. We go back and try it - too shallow, so abandon it. Then back at Marlow lock all nearby public mooring suspended, FFS. We decide to moor right on the lock (not allowed to do) and ring Le Boat people for help. They say just stay there and if Lock Keeper gives us agg just say it's an emergency.  We moor at extreme end of lock and put up a sign tell other boaters that we're not waiting for lock, just staying temporarily. It's all been a bit stressful, and a couple of other boaters we encounter have suffered the same fate. A guy, that looks like a murderer, moors next to us.

It's 8ish and we go to Marlow for food. First pub - days for will be over hour wait. Sod that. Zizzi says too understaffed. Whatever. Pizza Express has a table and all is well. Back to boat at after 10pm, gin rummy and bed.