A full on day

With Matty on board we were up early, which wasn't a problem as Del likes getting up early anyway, it must be a boy thing.. We had some breakfast and then we got ready to go into town.. Matty hadn't seen the changing of the guards at Windsor so we walked up in the sunshine and got a top spot for him to see it.. He loved it! 

We waited till they did the return trip and then went to the Crooked house and then on to the Museum.

It gives you all the history of Windsor castle and also lots of other interesting things like the longest Brunel bridge and how aeronautics started in Windsor with the first aerial post, and Matty completed the coat of arms in Lego..

We then did a bit of shopping and showed Matty the station and local shops finishing in Waitrose where he wanted to pick up some baking stuff to make our dessert today..

We walked back and Matty did some fishing and made a friend off the boat w.b Lazybones, a wide beam which was at the Crick Boat Show..

They did manage to catch a fish in the nets..

Georgia went swimming in the Thames with her Grandad and Matty was soon over there and jumping in with them.. They were watched very closely by us all and had so much fun..

Afterwards Del watched the Qualifying of the Grand Prix and then we had pizza in the cratch and for our dessert we had Matty's special tart... Mmmm it was lovely with all the trimmings.. and he even had some left to share it with w.b Lazybones..

We then decided to take Matty to the fair and offered to take Georgia, Matty's friend with us..

We all walked down along the Thames past the swans to the fairground and the first shock was how expensive it was.. £2.50 a go on most things and £3.00 for the bumper cars.. 

Still they had a brilliant time going on a few things and their favourites was the bumper cars and the Ghost train..

They also both came away with a few prizes.. 

We got back to Derwent6 at 10.00pm and then sat out in the warm air till Matty was yawning and ready for bed.. "I am just loving this trip" he kept saying..

Returning Crew via Maccy D's

We were up early and Al got the 10.20am train down to Kent.  She was going down to see her Mum and Dad and also to pick up our new guest.. She went out with her Dad in the afternoon and then he took her to the station. There she met up with Del's brother Cliff and Matthew, one of the boys.. Al then brought him back to Derwent6 and Del met them in Windsor at MacDonald's of course. Matty was in his element..

We then went to the pub and sat outside as Matty loves watching the planes coming into Heathrow, then it was back to Derwent6. Matty soon had the fishing net out as well as drawing the different planes landing overhead..

Till the next time!

We had a lay in this morning and were woken by the planes landing at Heathrow going right over the castle..  It was another nice warm day and we sat out in the cratch with breakfast.. We were soon met by Sue and Vic who said they were making a move after taking the girls for a walk.. They stopped and had a cup of tea with us and we reminisced about last night and the laugh we had!!

  We said our goodbyes and waited for them to go past us..

Thanks again for a lovely couple of days.....

We then watched some of the Commonwealth Games and then Del went out on his bike to work off some of the beer drunk.. In the evening we were going out but had a few lads hanging round Derwent6 so decided to have a great night in..

Out with our Blogging Idols

So the last couple of days we have been relaxing and taking in the sunshine. Del has been giving Derwent6 a polish and Al has been getting a shopping fix..
We were doing pretty much the same when who should walk along but Sue and Vic off n.b. No Problem.. These two are one of the longest running boating bloggers and were our inspiration to blog about our adventures, and I'm sure many others. We had always seen each other for a coffee, but never had some real quality time together, time to make amends...
It was so good to see them both looking so well and with a boat engine which was purring like a kitten.. "Fancy Lunch" they said... As you all know we are not ones to turn down an offer and we headed straight to Wetherspoons.

Wednesday was Cheap Chicken day and we made the most of it.. Afterwards we split and did some shopping and agreed that we would meet up in the afternoon for a cup of tea and nibbles.

Sue had made a lovely Ginger Cake and we brought the biscuits.. We played with Meg and Penny and chilled in the shade watching the world go by on the Thames.. 

It got to 6.30pm and we felt like going for a drink in a pub garden and we walked along the Thames and found a nice pub.. It was a lovely temperature and the beers went down easy as the night went on and we had another fun night....

It finished off with Vic fancying chips on the way home, it was a nice touch and went down well after all that drink..

We were offered more drinks on No Problem but we were all flagging and had probably had enough if we were honest.. Thanks guys for another memorable fun day in this fantastic life....

Top (up) weekend

On Saturday we had another one of those hot nights, portholes open, sheets off trying to get some air.. but we did manage to get a few hours.. We thought we would do some cleaning jobs and Al wanted to go shopping for some bits in Windsor.. We then waited... We were waiting for a long time friend Paul and Sam to arrive on the train and they turned up at 4.00pm. It was so great to see them both..

They turned up with a couple of bottles of wine so you could see how the rest of the weekend was going to go... The sun had come out and we sat in the park and cratch chatting away and trying to catch up for lost time, with the wine of course..
As it was Saturday we booked a table for later on in the evening and walked into town to Carluccio's. We were still chit chatting all night long finding out about their travels and ours..  Paul and Sam very kindly paid for the meal which should have been our treat, so a very big thank you guys

So more wine and beers later, we walked to All Bar One where we finished off the evening with some G & T's, and when we were thrown out of there we walked back to Derwent6.. We still had another drink before we crashed into bed at 3.00am, yes sorry guys we were a bit loud but we were enjoying ourselves..

Sunday morning as you would guess, we got up late and Al was the one who was suffering the most. We surfaced around 9.00am and the kettle was on.. We had some tea and looked at the weather as it was a bit overcast.

Al somehow made the bacon butties, but couldn't manage to eat one. So what shall we do.. As it got a bit late we decided to take them on a trip to Bray and back and as we set off the sun came out... Paul and Sam were soon into helping out through the locks and it was warming up as we travelled.

We got to Bray and they were fascinated by the houses we were passing..

It soon turned to lunchtime and we pulled into our mooring at Bray.. We got out the chairs and Al (who had sobered up a bit) got lunch ready on the cratch table..

We turned the music up and the sun turned it's rays up and the drinks soon flowed again, hair of the dog!!!! we set off at five and this time Paul and Sam were taking us back..

It was nice for Del and Al to be sitting out on the bow listening to the trickle of water with a beer, it felt like we had the river to ourselves again..

We pulled into Windsor again and we managed to get a nice mooring on the backwaters.. We had some nibbles and we walked to the station at 7 30pm.. We checked the times of the trains and just had time to pop into the pub and have the 'one before they go' drink..  They ended up rushing to get the train as we all didn't want to split.. 

We walked back along the waterfront and picked up some chips and watched the sunset across the river.. then chilled in the warm evening back on Derwent6. Thanks again you happy pair.. It was just a great weekend and we had so much fun. We will be doing that again later in the year...

Good timing to Windsor

We were up early this morning and wanted to try to get to Windsor while boats were on the move.. We set off and had to manually do Bray Lock which seemed to be no problem..

It had rained heavily overnight and we had some massive thunderstorm but the flow on the Thames appeared to be alright.

We carried on past Monkey Island and then on to Boveney Lock, just as the lock keeper had turned up, Del managed to wipe down Derwent6 on the way to get the dust off..

We went down this quickly and then turned as we came out for water.. This is a tricky water point for narrowboats as it has a very high wall which the gunwale goes under so you have to make a very steady approach.

We filled with water and reversed and turned back into the flow which had now seemed to have picked up a tad.. We took it easy round the tricky bends at the race course and soon got to Windsor.. We were surprised at how empty the moorings were on the Thames but we couldn't get into the back waters so perhaps they were trying to tell us something..  We moored up and by this time the sunshine was out in full glory again..

We had brunch out in the cratch and were soon joined by loads of boats, it just suddenly got busy. Del went out on his bike for a couple of hours while Al sunbathed/tried to keep cool on Derwent6... Two of the boats which moored with us was nb Autumn Myst and nb Autumn Years, and Bob and June kindly offered us tea and biscuits with them both in the sunshine. It was so hot and humid, you just didn't feel like doing anything. We got the chairs out and sat watching the world go by till we had some dinner, salad was all we felt like.. As the evening drew in it just got more humid but it was nice with our candles going and incense, just drinking wine.. It started to rain at 10.00pm so we took a shower and fell on top of the bed hoping to get some sleep........

Twelve Hour Cruse

We had to go this morning, we had itchy feet again and we only had a couple of days on our pumpout, so we set off at 8.30am.. WooHoo it felt nice to be travelling down stream for the first time this year with Derwent6 at idling speeds.

We got to Caversham Lock just before it opened, good timing and then pulled into Better Boating Marina for Diesel just before it opened. We filled with diesel here even though it was 99p a litre but we did manage to get self declaration with them.. We also had a pumpout while we were there in case the stations were busy on the Thames..  Next stop......Food!.
We cruised down to the Tesco moorings and couldn't believe how empty it was..

Al popped in to mainly top up the drinks.. Can you also believe this weather Phew! we love it... The cupboards were also filled with BBQ and salad stuff..
So heavier at the stern and in the middle we needed weight on the bow, so we pushed off to Sonning and then passed another favourite mooring of ours..

We stopped again at Shiplake and filled with water and then got in the queue for the lock..

We then got to Henley and we just missed the Swan Upping as they were at lunch there, but we saw the boats and them giving a display to the kids..

We couldn't stop at this point it was so busy with people and boats because of it.. They even had an American film crew following them with drone camera's..

We got to the next lock at Hambleden where we were told one of the drone camera's went into the water and the locky had to fish it out.....never a dull moment, and as the gates opened two swans came in with their signets.

We flowed on down to Marlow in the hope we would get a mooring.. No Chance! the Swan Upping hadn't done us any favours, so we then thought Bourne End and no chance there either in fact they were three abreast..
So we moved onto Cookham and that was busy so that made our mind up to take a chance and head for another favourite mooring of ours at Bray..

Time was getting on at Cookham and we just missed the lock keeper so the lock was on Self Service at 7.00pm.

We had it to ourselves so it was a nice steady drop and we carried on to Maidenhead..  It was lovely cruising this section as it was so warm and the water was like glass with all the wildlife out and about.. At Maidenhead Lock a boat had just gone through and it was so slow filling but we got through in the end and it was 8.00pm. We passed all the millionaire houses and turned the corner.. Blimey our mooring was still empty... we swung Derwent6 round and moored up..

It was 8.30pm... Twelve hours cruising and what a lovely day cruising we had.. We then chilled out in the cratch with a glass of wine for the sunset.. We feel soooo lucky!!