Hurray!!!! Got the pump and Moving

The poor signals here have not encouraged us to keep blogging so that's why we have taken a bit of a break from it all. Al took the opportunity to go down to Kent again and this time to help her Dad take her Mum in for a check up, also she had an appointment for the doctor herself.. It just so happened we had got a call from the boatyard saying our water pump had arrived, so it gave Del the chance to fit it while Al was away.. Everything went well and Al sorted her Mum out with her Dad and she is waiting the results of her doctors appointment..Del managed to get the pump fitted and bled so he can now look at the old one, so we then have a spare if it fails again.. When Al got back we really had the urge to move and on Thursday morning we were very keen to get away.. We managed to turn just in front of two other boats and got to the lock first not that we were rushing..

It was lovely to get going again in the Autumnal sunshine. It is still very overgrown on the South Oxford and we had to weave Derwent6 in between the bushes and trees. We spotted loads of wood but with the shallow sections it wasn't worth damaging the rudder to try and get it.. We still haven't lit the fire, so we have no coal on board yet, lets hope its like last year when it was nearly Christmas (Yuk that word Christmas) before we went onto coal.. We got to Somerton Deep lock and Al had a bit of trouble on the bottom gate as it is so heavy now.. but we got through alright..

We pushed on to Aynho where we stopped at the wharf and topped up with diesel and water and also had a pumpout on the waste tank...

 As we then pushed on we got to the river section where we noticed loads of diesel in river..

It was quite bad and we were beginning to think it was us, after just filling up.. but it turned out to be some idiot who had dropped it in the river..

We were enjoying moving so much we nearly got to Banbury before we stopped and pulled up in front of friends Gary and Beryl on n.b The Answer.

After a long chat we got ourselves sorted out for the evening. We were worn out from cruising all day and ended up having an early night....