We are now back in Devizes in poll position to go down the long flight of locks, 26 of them tomorrow which we need to complete by early evening as we are booked for dinner in the Barge Inn, a pub we tried last week and found to be good.
There are several Barge Inn’s, Bridge Inn’s and Lock Inns on the canal, the publicans were not very inventive and over the years must have caused a great many missed appointments when one of the parties went to the wrong pub.
The canal trust lock the top and bottom gates of the flight overnight and won’t let the first boat through (that’s us) until 10am, I think the idea is to create a bit of queue so they can make sure as many boats go through together thereby saving water.
I have attached an aerial picture of the locks stolen from the web which gives a better idea of the engineering involved. Each lock has it’s own “pound” which serves as a reservoir so that the locks fill quickly and that water can be stored all the up the flight.
Another boat has already approached us wanting to be our “buddies” tomorrow, probably to share our prime spot and also I suspect they think we own our boat and therefore know what we are doing. Almost all hire boats have the hire companies logo’s all over them and snotty boat owners look down their noses at such amateurs but our boat is painted to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the end of the war and has no other markings, I suspect people think I am an old soldier, perhaps I should pass round a hat.
Hopefully there will be lots of nice Canal Trust volunteers tomorrow, otherwise I will be reporting some very sore arms tomorrow, 26 locks means more than 100 paddles to be wound up and down.