Saturday, October 08, 2016

Autumn Soddit cruise–day #1

Saturday 8th October.

Well, the trip to the boat on Friday evening was a new experience for us, it’s not often you have to chase your dinner around country roads for a few miles ;^) We had planned to use the Fish and Chip van that is advertised as being at Ivinghoe from 3 till 8:30pm on a Friday. When we arrived at 7:30 we found it just moving off down Station road towards Cheddington so we gave chase. On arrival at Cheddington Green we joined a queue of about eight people already waiting for the van to arrive. The wait was worth it as the food was excellent. We then went to Slapton wharf and loaded all our stuff aboard Jannock before opening the barrel of XT3 and playing five games of Soddit.

IMG_20161008_121733Saturday morning was cold and misty with occaisional drizzle as the intrepid crew made ready for the off after a breakfast of bacon sarnies. I started the morning by walking back towards the winding point and re-attaching a loose boat to the bank. One mooring stake was missing but i managed to secure it by using a large branch out of the hedge banged into the ground. Once on the move the drizzle stopped but it remained cold in the wind. We passed up through Horton, Ivinghoe, Seabrook and Marsworth locks before stopping for lunch near the Red Lion at Marsworth. Fishing was done whilst lunch was prepared with a few poor examples being caught.IMG_2764

Then into Marsworth bottom lock to start our solo ascent up the flight. We then had to wait at the second lock whilst northbound traffic descended and again at the penultimate lock. Finally out the top and a sharp right turn into the wendover Arm. This arm is quite shallow in places but the water is so clear that you can see all the shoals of fish swimming alongside the boat. It’s only when you see this that IMG_20161008_181523you realise that boat traffic does not scare the fish population.

Right down to the current end of navigation where we turned round and moored for the night at the very end. Ian caught a decent sized roach here although most of the fishing activity would best be described as ‘whitebait’.

Once dinner was done with we had another six games of Soddit before calling it a night and going to bed just after midnight.

Graham

No comments: