Or Batman and Robin, as they may now be known, magiced up an excellent weekend of fun despite the really atrocious weather.

We set off as planned on Friday at 9am. Flying Colours travelled up river with us, we passed Caleg who remained moored at Staines and joined Speedbird who was already moored at the ‘factory’ in Runnymede. A little later a very wet Clive on his open boat, Darkest Dreaming joined us. By now it was non stop rain. A warming coffee on Speedbird was very welcome.

That evening it was drinks on Etta. Some people travelled to join us by car. And dodged their way through the very wet and muddy mooring, which also contained   generous deposits of goose poo.

Conversation revolved around the weather. Andrew and I decided this was very unfair. We expect river cruises to be extremely calm and very relaxing. In fact they are sometimes so relaxing I yearn for the adventure of entering a foreign port. But with sea trips come weather decisions. But this weekend, hey ho, we had a weather decision to make on a river trip! Not fair…

So we made the weather decision and the next morning we regretfully made our way back home to Ripples. In hindsight we can say it was the right decision, as the whole river is now on red boards, many lock moorings are under water, and many bridges had their height above water severely restricted. Batman and Robin were safely moored in their up river marinas, controlling ever changing plans and volumes of texts and emails from Easter Cruise HQ.

But, for us, this was the morning that the family joined us for, they thought, a trip up river to Windsor. Instead we took them home to Ripples.

 

Needless to say the trip home was very quick! Several knots of tide with us and no one to hold us up in the locks. By mid afternoon all TMYC boats were back on their respective moorings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But the weekend was not over. Batman and Robin had arranged an evening  get together in Windsor Yacht Club. So, around 30 of us turned up, mostly by car, for an excellent fish and chip supper (why is our local chippie not like that?), a smattering of bopping and a lot of chat. TWYC members manned the bar and the keyboards and in general properly looked after us.

 

At the end of the evening we collapsed into bed after what had seemed a very long couple of days. What next??