Hooray! and Hadar

Well can you believe it we're on the move!!! We set off early (still through some of the ice), to get up to the water point at the top of the Watford flight and filled up the water tank which took a hour and a half. This gave us time to get some washing in and tumble dry, and this added another half hour to the water filling.

Everyone was on the move today with six boats coming up through the locks, one of them being the welcome sight and wonderful sound of Hadar the coal boat. We were down to our last bag of coal and no wood, so it was Hadar to the rescue, and five bags were quickly thrown on the roof of Derwent6.

It was lovely to see Jo and Keith, as from the early days of following blogs Hadar was always one we were envious of. We felt we already knew them and they gave us a big welcome. Thanks guys for your help. We then made our way down the locks and noticed some nice wood fallen from the trees, so it was rude not to throw that on the roof as well. We always said "we won't be putting things on the roof", but that didn't last long.

So with wood, coal and water and us well down at the bow we now needed to stop for diesel. We got to Weltonfield and they did us a 95 - 5 split at 75p a litre, so we were happy with that. It was a bit more than we've paid before but needs must..... We made a friend while we were there.

So that was it, we were now all tanked up and ready to go anywhere.....

We got to the junction at Norton and then reversed up, through all the British Waterways boats, to the lock so we could get some more washing done. You could see that they were getting on with the locks at Buckby, and the canal did look strange without water. We sat down and had something to eat and then made our way up to the pub, The New Inn, for a few pints of Frog island (yes we're now trying all the real ales) We left the pub half p***ed so couldn't blog last night....Well what do you expect we've been dry for 18 days.