Crash! That was the bike falling in the lock.

Kew: Hanbury Junction to Worcester, Friday 27th June 2014

For the last few locks of the trip David invited me to steer. This meant that he could get his bike out and do some lockwheeling himself. At Gregory's Mill Bottom Lock David lowered his bike onto the boat, but we were descending possibly a little too quickly. Before I had time to whip my camera out there was a crash - and the bike had disappeared.

Oops!

I was thinking boat hook ... Sea Searcher ... but, amazingly, and you wouldn't know it, one of the pedals had caught on the very edge of the boat, and Richard was able to haul it back on board.

Now, admit it, you thought that was going to be my bike falling in, didn't you?

Before this incident another strange thing happened. We were pootling along nicely, when a boat pulled out just in front of us and proceeded to reverse, slowly, in our direction. The man steering it must have had a very good reason for doing this, but I don't know what it was. We had to stop and drift into the bushes while he completed his manoeuvre. No, we weren't in a hurry but, surely, he could have waited a few seconds for us to pass. In the bridge hole he hopped off and pulled his boat in to a mooring there. Perhaps he just wanted to be sure that we weren't going to nick it ourselves.

There was an even more interesting incident which happened on this leg. I might tell you about it tomorrow.