It has been a great joy to welcome Connor & Bekah Perring to Westering for three nights (Bekah's second trip aboard, having joined us in July 2019 when she was Miss Galpin), not least because they joined us just above Hatton Locks, the notorious flight of 21 wide locks just west of Warwick! Local resident and old uni friend James Soper and his wife Amy and daughter Flo also came aboard / helped out which made the whole thing a lot more enjoyable. A Grand ReUnion indeed. Connor & Bekah's stay was not without incident, however. Read on to find out more...
By now a little gaggle of men from other boats had congregated at the lockside. Initially I smiled and listened carefully to their advice but it soon became apparent they knew no more than we did and their conjectures became increasingly unhelpful and unwelcome. We were trying to follow Brandon’s instructions when we suddenly had the curious sensation that the boat was moving upwards. It seems like a jolly CRT chap had authorised the flock of impatient boaters to shut the gates behind us and start filling the lock while we were scrambling down in the engine bay. If I’d paid more attention I’d have been fuming but luckily we were a bit preoccupied. When the lock was nearly full Tom managed to correctly interpret a diagram Brandon had sent us with the emergency stop lever clearly circled. Suddenly the throbbing and the whirring fell silent. Our lock wheelers opened the gates and Tom and Connor towed the boat out with ropes in order to let the built up traffic pass.
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