Slough basin! What basin?

0 locks, and 15 miles . Now moored at Cowley Peachey

Another brilliant start to the day which we expected to be cold and frosty. The overnight frost didn't eventuate. As usual we had the canal to ourselves and due to the navigator misreading the chart's we missed the entrance to the Slough Arm. The Navigator thought it was just the marina entrance. Anyway we carried on to lock 89 where we winded and backtracked to the Slough arm entrance.

As we entered the arm we were confronted with Land and Water contractors who were trimming the overhanging tree's. We waited until it was convenient and they then let us pass. They had finished the north bank from the boatyard at Iver to the Packet Boat Marina at Cowley Peachey and were just starting on the south bank. It was a shame that they were not doing any dredging as they had a machine on site but they were only using it to extract logs from the canal. .

Land and Water Contractors.

As we passed the moored boats at Highline Yachting at Iver which were moored 3 abreast we could see the bottom of the canal and the moored boats barely had 3 inches of water under the hull. After we passed bridge 9 and the last winding hole before the end of the canal we also started to churn up the mud on the bottom until we reached bridge 10 then the water depth improved.

What a disappointment when we reached "The Basin", a bit of the old original wharf with mooring rings too high to be of any use and the winding hole. We felt that it wasn't even worth mooring up so we headed straight back to the mainline.

The end of the Slough Arm - what a disappointment.

By the time we got back to the Land and Water contractors they had progressed as far as bridge 3. I could think of a few places on the mainline that could do with some tree trimming and there would certainly be more boat movements on the mainline. Mind you, we were surprised on the return journey to pass 2 boats on their journey towards Slough. So perhaps there is more use made of the arm than we thought. Before we moored up for the night we seemed to be loosing power and it was no surprise initially to find a huge island of rubbish wrapped around the bow and after a trip down the weed hatch to extract a shopping bag full of industrial thickness plastic from the prop.

Now the trees are loosing their foliage we are starting to glimpse more of the bird life with 2 Woodpecker's and a Jay being spotted today.

807 locks, 1123.5 miles, 33 Tunnels, 39 swing bridges and 19 lift bridges since Nov 2006