We left our mooring at 8:20 this morning with the somewhat infamous Fobney Lock a few hundred metres ahead.  Toby performed an immaculate pick up at the tricky exit and we were on our way to Reading.  It was early enough in the morning for the crowds to still be in bed and we hardly saw any gongoozlers.  One press of the button and the traffic lights turned to green and at Blake’s Lock we caught up with a boat that had passed our mooring earlier in the morning. We have some nice little pieces of GoPro video of this section which may eventually see the light of day!

The turn onto The Thames brought a completely different feel to the day and a change to the scenery.  We were into deep wide water and soon there were some elegant waterside properties to admire.  At Caversham we met Toby’s friend Praveen and his wife.  They declined our offer of a short trip but kindly supplied us with some very tasty and spicy bread.

We had considered mooring at Goring (wonderfully poetic) but it seemed that other boats wanted to race, in a competition to get any available spaces there.  We just relaxed and let them play silly whatsits.  Toby and Sarah had to catch a train or bus back to Oxford and Goring was the best choice for that so they helped us through the unattended Goring Lock and departed for the train.

It was sad to see Toby and Sarah leave as we had had a great couple of days together and had really appreciated their help.

Now we are going to have to get back to working a lot harder!

We continued through Cleeve Lock, which was still attended, and found a delightful spot on the bank almost opposite the Leatherne Bottel after threading our way through a sailing race.  It was very hot and sunny so we sat and relaxed watching the wild life and quite a variety of boats passing by.

It seems we were lucky to pick a spot where the water was quite deep near the edge.  A passer by remarked that she had never been able to moor here except about five hundred metres further on where there was a gate, that they used as a marker, and the water there was consistently deep near the edge.