Wet dry wey dry wet dry wet

My 3 mobile dongle is still not letting me upload pictures. Meanwhile I'll keep posting the words and put in pics when I can.

Here we are back at the New Inn at Send, moored up for the night while a steady stream of showers pass over. The inn sign here has obviously been painted by someone without a clue about boats. The barge depicted appears to be going full speed astern and the stove chimney appears to be at the other end from the cabin. Ah well.

Yesterday was not so bad as the forecast threatened but we stayed on our rather pleasant moorings in the meadows south of Guildford and watched the Wimbledon men’s final (that took nearly all day!).

Setting off through Guildford town centre this morning it was noticeable thet the river was higher and running faster, so we made rapid progress. After a few minutes we were at Dapdune Wharf, now a museum of the Wey navigation, run of course by the National Trust. We stopped to empty the loo cassettes and had a look round. Most interesting were the huge wooden Wey barges being restored there. It’s hard to imagine how they got up and down some of the narrow and shallow sections of the river. An old guy there who had worked on them said they couldn’t use big horses to tow the barges because they’d never get under the bridges.

We were joined by narrowboat Lily A who we had met at the weekend and accompanied them for the rest of the day’s cruise. At Triggs lock the lengthsman was busy locking boats through and said that he was glad of it, otherwise he would have had to go over to local weirs to draw more water off. Apparently if the navigation rises dangerously, they can normally get it back to a safe level in four hours by judicious use of the weir sluices.