Shiny Shiny

A panoramic view of the reach just below the bridge. There is a very lively flow on it at the moment, which is causing some nasty problems for boats trying to navigate upstream.

Chas drove me to Uxbridge, so that I could look at an actual canal. And visit the chandlery there. Purchased far too much. Items included a length of flue pipe, so that we could redo our chimney. Stove Rope. A kickstarter spring module for our toilet. And some shiny new black plastic bag fenders. Our old rope ones were rotten. Falling apart, limp, and beyond repair. Got a test bag of Supertherm smokeless coal too. Which so far, we've been very impressed with. It's cheaper than Taybrite. It gives off nice heat, and burns with an attractive flame. Each oval seems to last longer, too. Thumbs up!

Thanks for the chimney, Sue & Vic. It's come in really handy. We've finally invested in a chinaman's hat, too.

Cash not acceptable

Our friend Richard is up from Brixham for a few days.

Cruising around Temple island at Henley.

I've written about this bloke's greed before. And he didn't dissapoint today. We'd moored up on the meadow just above Temple island, and enjoyed a nice lunch. A couple of hours later, we saw him steaming towards us for his money. I've been saving up my 1, 2 and 5 pence pieces just for such a situation. The conversation that ensued...

him: Mooring fees, please.
me: sure. (hands over carrier bag full of change).
him: What's this?!
me: It's £8
him: I can't possibly take it in that denomination.
me: eh? It's legal tender, coin of the realm. What's up with it?
him: It's too heavy. You will have to move on.
me: But that's ridiculous!
him: Moor up on the park, where it is free.

We know nowhere in Henley is free. Nice try at stitching us up. But we are not idiots. On another day, we'd have dug our heels in. We were offering to pay, in cash. But we were having too nice a day to put up with his pettyness, and we shoved off. So, if you want a free mooring in Henley, pay him in 1, 2, and 5p pieces. It's too heavy, apparently.

Power to the People!

Panoramic

Dermandar app for iPhone..

Takes a series of images & stitches them all together into a panorama. Giving me more time to enjoy my pimms on the poop deck.

WoOt!

Slowboat to Henley

Wb 'Walhalla' at Henley. We don't like it ourselves. Unusual, yes. But also a bit ugly. 'whalehalla'. :) But the owner seems to be very happy with it, so good luck to him.

Marsh lock was well behaved. The weir stream was minimal, so we didn't get pushed into anything before we could get tied up.

Sheena, indulging in some buffing.

Our Labrador tiller pin. Thanks Chas!

Sheena, rustling up our Bacon Baps.

Our view, this morning.

The towpath moorings below Wargrave and Shiplake were all empty. So we made the most of them, and both enjoyed a relaxing couple of days without any hassle.

Wargrave

We enjoyed a peaceful night at Shiplake College. Somebody walked past the boat at 3.30am, but I don't think they were burglars. On the way down this morning, the lock keeper at Shiplake took the mickey about us being "Semi Permanant Residents of Abingdon". I explained that we'd been stuck behind the Red boards. He laughed and said "That's what they all say!". Continued on down to Wargrave, which is a lovely spot for a stroll...

Until you come across this...

Somebody considered the middle of the footpath to be a suitable place to light their fire. What an idiot!

Bags 'o' Shite. Which will be there forever. How very considerate.

A bath?! The mind boggles. No, it's not for feeding cattle. Somebody has dumped it there. And as there are no houses on this side of the river. You get three Guesses... :)

Sigh. The worst part of this, is that some pillock has left the plastic from their tinnies strewn about. Birds get their feet caught in that stuff all the time, sadly.

Stressful Saturday

Today started out fine. Sheena cruised us up to Reading, in the sunshine. When we got there it was stuffed full of boats, as we'd anticipated. But i managed to squeeze us into the bushes just down from the wobbly landing stage. Every time another boat went past it banged us into the overhanging trunk of a tree. but we could live with that for 20 minutes while we did some shopping. So Sheena bravely ventured into tescos on a saturday afternoon. While I (overjoyed to have a net signal at last) sat down to update our blog.

5 minutes later, I hear a loud... "I'm going to moor up next to one of these boats", followed by a massive BONNNNGGG, and much interior rocking about. He'd hit us when trying to come alongside. Wifi signal goes down. GRRRRRR.... Then he is on our deck scrambling about with his ropes. I should have told him to bugger off then, but put myself in his situation, and figured out how grateful I'd be in that situation. He then more or less told me what he was going to do, with a perfunctory "is that alright?" tacked onto the end. Tied up and alongside us, I didn't have the heart to say "no, sod off".

He didn't apologise for crashing into us. He severed our net connection. And he p*ssed me off. bigtime. With his beer belly, stockbrokers shirt, crap steering, and bullying demeanour. Rather than rant and rave every time he and his partner stepped across our boat (and we hit the tree again). I put up with it. So, the reason I'm relaying this sorry tale is...if some time you want to berth up next to us, and I say "no, sorry". It's probably this guy who is to blame.

Thankfully 30 minutes later, we were heading downstream, out of Reading again.

Pictures of our otherwise lovely day...

The extremely rich people who own this big house, and the estate surrounding it (all the way up to the french horn restuarant in Sonning), are not too bothered about boaters mooring on their land. We salute their generosity. Thankyou.

This big 'U' fashioned out of railway line, has just appeared near Uri Geller's mansion. We wonder if he's used his special 'powers' to bend it?

Burgled Boat

We were sorry to hear that Narrowboat 'Grace' was broken into down at Shiplake college last week. The thieves broke in through the front doors, and trashed the inside of the boat and all of the storage cupboards in their pursuit of 'stuff'.

When Anna got back to her boat, she was understandably devastated. The police turned up and managed to lift a footprint, but they didn't seem overly concerned about fingerprints on the doorframes or interior.

There has been a spate of outboard engine thefts down there, but this is the first time that a boat has been broken into. Commiserations to you, Anna. We hope this doesn't put you off boating.