Day 124 and we leave the Thames. We were early enough that we had to operate Sonning lock ourselves and then a short cruise to the not particularly inviting entrance to the Kennet and Avon (K&A) Canal at Reading. All quiet as we passed through Reading, no moorings on the main route despite the fact you got past many bars and restaurants on the way through the traffic light controlled section – why that needs to be so long God only knows. As a boater you set the lights a bit like using a pedestrian crossing, only there is no proper landing stage so you have to get the boat in exactly the right place so someone can reach out and press the button. On through a stop lock and the backend of Reading and onto K&A proper. Even all the possible long term mooring spots are not used which made us really wonder how bad it is. Really not welcoming for boaters. Stopped for lunch with a friend at the Cunning Man at Burghfield Bridge. Saw the female single hander D had helped out at Brentford; we had thouht we would see her again on the K&A  as she is also heading for Bristol but didn’t think it would be this soon. As we left the pub we witnessed a shouted conversation between two late middle aged ex military gents, it was hilarious, living caricatures. Went through a couple of locks with military gent one before mooring; the wife of military gent 2 asked us about moorings but its been too long for us to remember where the best ones were. Stopped overnight just upstream of Theale swing bridge, couldn’t fit on the good 48hr moorings because of poor mooring by other boats – a real bugbear with us. Stopped about 10 cars, there are a lot of swing bridges on the K&A – oh the power!

Day 125 and we have a new visitor but first we needed to visit some services, we decided to do this early as weren’t sure whether the services at Aldermaston were associated with the hire base, if they were we thought they might not want us there on a likely turnaround day – this proved to be a bad decision. We passed military man 2 and crew on the way – they now appear to have eight people on the boat. They find us on the service mooring and we agree to travel with them through the locks. We get a good routine going with their massive crew although, because they come from the Wey, half their crew are occupied by holding ropes, two of their crew are too young to be of use and need to be watched by at least one other member of the group. Later found out four were just day visitors. We were meeting D’s brother Simon at Aldermaston and we planned to be there about 1100 which was pretty much the time we arrived – unfortunately about ten minutes too late for the first of only two bridge opening times of the day. We had interpreted the restricted opening, due to a mechanical problem, to be between 1100 and 1600; it turns out it is only 1100 and 1600 so we had to wait nearly five hours at Aldermaston bridge. The only plus side of this was J had forgotten our key in a swing  bridge and, because of the keys we had found, our number was written on them and  some kind soul rang us and then brought them back to us. We spent the waiting time reading and playing games but still it was a waste of time. AND we found the services are not part of the hire base so we could have delayed our stop GRRRRRR……. Eventually moved on, with Simon taking the helm some of the time, to moor just above Midgham lock, nearly aground but OK. Became aground when two hire boats that had followed us from Aldermaston came through the lock. Military man 2 and crew continued on without us.