Everything all on queue

Well it seemed like a noisy night after being in the countryside for nearly two weeks, but we were woken up by a tap on the side....."have you got any jump leads" a man from a hire boat said. He had got a flat starter battery and planned to jump off his domestic batteries, not a good idea and one which often won't work. With that Del got up to help him out and ended up walking along to Tooley's boat yard and borrowing their jump pack and leaving the keys to Derwent6 as a deposit. After getting the engine started we found it wasn't charging (a alternator fault) so he had to phone his hire company anyway but at least he could run the engine so the rest of the family had hot water.

Meanwhile Al had taken the opportunity to do a bit more shopping, a danger in a village let alone a town. So when she got back we made our way down through the town centre and down to the winding point to turn. At the bottom of the lock we had to wait to get water but we didn't mind as we knew we would be on there for ages. Our water has gone for 13 days and we have not changed our living habits at all. We also took the opportunity to empty the waste tank using the manual pumpout. We made our way back through Banbury which was like Piccadilly Circus, and we had to hold Derwent6 before the dreaded swing bridge where we lost our chimney last time. With us a bit lower from a full water tank we went under with ease.

We had a queue of five boats at the first lock and two there after so it was a slow journey back towards Cropredy, but the sun was shining so who cares. It was satisfying watching them crawling along on the M40 while we were waiting to go through the locks, and we know where we would rather be. At one of the locks we had time to have a look around and found a nice plum tree and greengages, some yummy puddings coming up we think.

The plan was to get through Cropredy today, but due to the traffic we knew we weren't going to make it. We were surprised when we got to our old mooring of 12 days it was still there. So with a good TV signal, 3G and rain on the way tomorrow it was rude not to use it again for a couple of days.

It had been such a hot sunny day today so we got out the BBQ and chilled for the rest of the evening with the Athletics.

We though we had better mention this guy as he had been with us all day and we had got rather attached to him. Here he is on the cratch cover.