Stowe Hill and away

We drove up from Cornwall - rather dull but dry with the occasional blue patches. As we had the air conditioning on in the car it was quite a surprise when we arrived to find that it was more than just warm! In fact, Mike worked up quite a sweat carrying the luggage and provisions from the car to the boat.The new sack trolley is much better than the older one, but it could only be used half way as the walk along the edge of the marina was too narrow.

We had left the boat at Stowe Hill Marina and it was safely in place for our return, although rather a lot of birds had been around and quite a bit of debris from the nearby trees as their blossom matured fell on the boat! We tried to forget how much effort we put into cleaning it just before we left the boat!

Around 3:30 we were ready to set off - quite a tight squeeze but not especially difficult. Once on the main line we continued through Weedon - lots of moored boats, both permanent moorings as well as 14 day and overnighters.

As it was so pleasant we moored up by five o'clock as any further would have meant tackling the Buckby locks or mooring even closer to the M1. As it is, we have a constant roar in the background. We had the time, but alas not the energy!

Instead, Mike tackled the bathroom cupboard door - whose hinge had come off on the last trip - which proved rather more tricky than he hoped. re-hanging the door was not the problem but aligning the catch toot for ever! A bottle of wine seemed justified afterwards!

Meanwhile, Christine finished off the meal (the cheesy bean crunch had been largely prepared some days ago and brought up with us) and cleaned off the worst of the bird droppings on the outside of the boat.