London visiting

Now, what was I saying before Christmas? Ah yes, all that stuff about London visitor moorings being full up. Well, we’ll be putting it to another test very soon as we hope to take Herbie up there later this week.  My general impression though is that things are perhaps not as bad as I thought when I got grumpy about Paddington basin in late November.  Since then Doug and James on NbChance have on two occasions found moorings in the basin.

My meeting with Sorwar Ahmed at CRT was quite positive in so far as he and his team did seem to be making inroads into the problem of London mooring generally and he was quite keen to get ideas as to how they could better get boats moving after their allotted time was up.   I suggested a return to the previous practice of mooring wardens (or it used to be the Merchant Square security guys in Paddington basin) giving each boater a welcome letter when they arrive, making clear the terms of their stay.  If I remember rightly, some years ago they would also have a word with you the day before your time was up to let you know they were expecting you to go.

Meanwhile, things are still looking pretty hairy on the Thames.  The other day we had occasion to go to an event at the Compleat Angler hotel in Marlow (there’s posh!). A week before it might have been called off because their car park had been flooded, but now the waters had receded enough to let us venture out across the grass to view the weir pool.

Out at the front of the hotel, which looks at the navigable part of the river, the speed of the flow was scary to say the least.  I think Herbie would have been going backwards fast even at full revs pushing against that current.  I’m very glad we can cruise to London on still water!

A couple of things about responses to my post about cheaper broadband (for which, thank you folks).  Yes you can get good deals on a longer term contract, but as we only use mobile data when we’re out boating we don’t want to pay every month because some months we would use none at all, or very little. For that reason we have until now been using versions of pay as you go.  It seems to be a fast moving market at the moment so I guess the thing to do is to keep looking for the deals.  Anyway, for the next three months we’ll be with mobidata and see how we get on.