Friday 17 June 2011

Rude

This week's award for outstanding and spectacular rudeness goes to a shiny shiny narrowboat owner. Nice as pie, and full of Northern charm & bonhomie before we entered the lock, the skipper of Nb 'Norwood' pulled off something so breathtakingly outrageous, we still can't quite believe it.

We entered Abingdon lock first, then Nb 'Norwood' followed us in. We descended, and all was well. Then, as soon as the lock gates were opening, Mr Norwood decided to break with etiquette and slammed his engine into "Full ahead" mode. Narrowly missing the lock gates, and scraping his stern all the way along our bow. No apology. No nothing. Then he sped off down the river to look for a mooring spot for himself and the boat he was buddied up with.

It's not so much the rudeness, or the dangerous and bad helmsmanship (despite having bow thrusters) which was so upsetting. It was the two-facedness of it all. He knew that we were also looking for a mooring spot downstream, when he made the decision to shaft us. I think that was just plain nasty.

But this story does have a happy ending. As it turns out, we did find ourselves a nice mooring spot, with easy egress for Sumo, and good TV reception. Sheena says, they're doubled up, down past the bridge, with a steep bank scramble to get themselves ashore.

Good Karma.

7 comments:

  1. AnonymousJune 17, 2011

    I thought you were coming up the Oxford?

    Bones

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  2. Hi son, you get them everywhere.

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  3. AnonymousJune 17, 2011

    >> Hi son, you get them everywhere.

    LOL. Thought he would be worried about scuffing up his 7k paint job, but he clearly didn't give a fork.

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  4. AnonymousJune 17, 2011

    >> I thought you were coming up the Oxford?

    Hi Bones. We still are. But, Sheena has to go to Devon for a few days, so we're stopping down at Abingdon. The CWDF forum had a thread recently about the Southern Oxford being "stuffed full of boats with nowhere to stop", so we didn't fancy chancing our luck on it just yet.

    K&S

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  5. hi son just curious to see if this comes up as kennyd4233 using firefox.

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  6. oh good! let me know when you are coming up here - it would be great to catch up. Nowhere to stop is an interesting outlook! I have heard the same about the Thames....

    Bones

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  7. AnonymousJune 22, 2011

    @BONES ~ Better the devil we know, I guess. the Oxford will be our first canal experience after 1.5 years on the river.

    @DAD ~ that seemed to work fine.


    K&S

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