5 miles, 8 locks. 1 swingbridge
But we walked straight past all of the locks and straight over the swingbridge with no windy-uppy-windy-downy-pushy-pully stuff at all! And Dad walked with us.
We left the boat behind and went on the train to Kintbury, then walked all the way back. Mum says this is because the swingbridge is broken so we couldn't take the boat, so that's why we didn't have to work the locks! She says that we will do the rest of the walk as normal - with Dad driving the boat alongside us. She says it is really fortunate that the boat is this side of the broken swingbridge. Actually, I'm not so sure.... I quite like the extra walking to and from the stations - and the extra fusses I manage to gain while we wait for the train!
We meeted and greeted lots of humans and doggy pals along the way today. Mum and Dad gave out lots of pieces of flappy stuff with coloured squiggles all over them. Some people handed back some shiny disks which went into a special pouch Mum has attached to my harness handle. Two of those people were rather important looking: They were both wearing black fur-substitutes, with round black head-lids that had black and white little squares all around. They had squawky boxes and all sorts of other things dangling on them too. They were very nice and, when a couple of mini-humans came along on wheelie-wizzers, the black-and-white people told them to get off their wheelie-wizzers and walk along that bit of towpath. The mini-humans did exactly as they were told! Maybe these black-and-white people are some kind of human equivalent of Guide Dog Mobility Intructors and Dog Trainers - 'Obey Me Or Else' people!
A few paces further on there were several men sitting, a litle way apart, each with long sticks going out over the canal. They were all sittting staring at their long sticks! Most odd! Usually, I like these long-stick-starers because they usually have tubs and bags of yummies around them. Today though, I was on harness so I couldn't inspect or hoover! Huff!
I did get a bit of a telling off from Mum - twice today! It seems she didn't appreciate my attempts to protect her from threats! First, by Victoria Park, just after we set off, I had to shout at both a hissing furball on a boat AND the hissing featherballs right by it. Then, not long after we got off the train and started walking along the towpath, I stopped to shout at a huge snorting, hay-munching monster that was stood behind a gate with huge round, hard paws and big sticky-up ears. It had a huge collar on and was standing watching some humans attaching a very long lead to a boat. Mum really told me off for shouting at this monster. I was only trying to protect her! She said his name is Charlie and he pulls the boat along. She tells me off for pulling! Huff! That's not fair!
We made it back to the boat via quite a lot of 'go-ahead' guiding practice on narrow bits. It was a good walk. I am ready for a good snooze now, while Mum does that weird frothy warm-rain box thing.
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