Day 6 - Raining

Day 6 - 16 miles and 6 locks.  Good progress today but it was a long and quite hard day. Aches and pains, hips and lower back, were around most of the time. We were on the water from 10am, when we left Reading Rowing Club until we arrived at our accommodation (Bisham Abbey National Sports Centre, lots of fit athletic people here) at 6:30pm, except for a 1 hour lunch stop at a riverside park in Henley.  Henley was getting ready for the Henley Regatta, with marquees going up everywhere and the river being marked out for racing.  Lots of other (proper) rowing boats on the river, all overtaking us.

We had our most significant rain today. Largely sunny in the morning, then several showers followed by a period of steady rain in the afternoon.  Most of the locks today didn’t have lock keepers so, with surprisingly few boats on the river, we had to work several of them ourselves.  Eventually, everything in the boat that was not in a dry bag, plus both of us, became pretty wet. Also, our rowing gloves got wet and wet gloves means more blisters.

Anyway, we have now completed more than half of the rowing challenge, so we are feeling pretty pleased. This evening we went to the local pub for a meal but it turned out to be a rather expensive restaurant.

Looking forward to reaching Windsor tomorrow.