The alarm went off at 4:00 am for our trip down the tidal river to Limehouse. Loads of motor cruisers has passed us yesterday, some evidently continuing on down river especially the bigger many layered ones, but others mooring up ahead of us. We were last in line. We were planned to leave half an hour before high tide, so at 5:05 we left our mooring in darkness. There was no sign of any activity and Pat thought that perhaps we had the wrong time. Then suddenly a whole load of stern lights appeared at once ahead of us and boats appeared behind. We were all led into the huge barge lock with us in the middle. Seemingly we were considered to have gatecrashed a motor boat club outing to Limehouse, for one of the skippers seemed offended that a narrowboat had been allowed into the lock with them all, and then remonstrated very angrily that we should remain behind until they had all gone. A sensible enough suggestion in its way because were were inevitably going to be last because of the difference in speed, but the boats behind seemed very reluctant to move until I was out of the way, so we left anyway. By Richmond, they had all disappeared and it was only there that we began to pick up the ebb tide giving us a speed somewhere between 7 and 8 mph. It was raining and the visibility poor. For most of the time we were the only boat moving in sight. Only two boats passed us opposite direction and another two joined us at Limehouse for the lock. The water was calm in consequence. Reaching Limehouse we turned and stemmed the tide waiting for the lock, then when directed, being level with the lock entrance, just turned slowly causing the boat to drift in, increasing power progressively with the turn until straight in no problem. This seems to be a much more certain method than trying to hug the downstream wall and turn because the notorious eddy effect is minimised. One of the two cruisers tried this and got caught out, the eddy driving him to the opposite wall just as I had experienced at Keady the first time I was on the Trent. For the time being we are breasted up with a widebeam on the "disabled" mooring pontoon, but hopefully we will be in good position for later on. The motor cruisers all had booked places in the marina proper, so have effectively disappeared.