Date - 27 12 06 Day - Wednesday Start - Tunbridge Wells End - Napton Folly
We left Tunbridge Wells at about 11 o'clock, the road reports on the radio was very favourable with no holdups on the M25. We whistled up the A21 and turned left onto the M25 where we found a car park in place of the motorway, we crept along with a slight pickup now and again. We decided to leave at the Stains tuning and passed terminal 5 of Heathrow on our way to the M4. The area was crawling with police and they were in the process of taking away a motorbike on the back of a lorry, at first we thought they must have caught a joy rider but then we came across more police cars, vans and motorbikes. The M4 was flowing freely and we were soon at junction 8/9 heading for the M40. Once on the M40 it was back to the stop start motoring but the sun did shine for a bit. We were glad to get to Banbury where we said goodbye to these "high speed" roads to get back on the quite, slow lanes at between 50 and 60 mph. We arrived at the boat at 3-30pm in the gathering gloom and the first drops of rain that we had seen since before Christmas. As usual we moved down to the lock to load the boat, we felt pity sure no one would want to come through tonight. The next decision was where to moor, we had considered just below the first lock but felt it would be better to warm the engine and water a bit so we headed off down the flight. The target was the pound above the bottom lock and by the time we got to the lock above it was quite dark. We had been passing signs saying "towpath Closed" and now it was as there was a large fence across right by the lock, not even room to pull in to work the lock and down below some one had pinched the towpath, so it was on down through the bottom lock and moor round the corner past the Folly pub for the night at 5-30 pm -- Brian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Visit this site and help save our waterways http://www.savethewaterways.org.uk/
