Water, water everywhere...
With a lack of imagination and disregard for context, Fleet Street hacks flooded the front pages with these words this week. If they had read Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner they would have appreciated how inappropriate their 'quote' was:
Water, water everywhere nor any drop to drink
Water, water everywhere and all the boards did shrink.
This reflected the absence of rain - not quite the problem in Glos at present.
Back in June we left the flood-prone River Soar a day before the rains closed it. Since when we have been lucky enough to be unaffected by the navigation restrictions which now seem to apply everywhere except the Grand Union south of Milton Keynes. Every day we are getting messages from fellow boaters who are unable to move. Some have been stuck for six weeks. In Rickmansworth we are surrounded by rivers and lakes but the local water management seems to have been very effective. We are moored opposite Tesco which occupies the site of Walkers boatyard where traditional narrowboats were built for years.