18th March '11

I shall start by putting the pictures on of the mooring last night in St. Ives - a bit of a climb down onto the boat but we coped! the chapel on the bridge is apparently only one of three in the country and the incumbent lived in the cellars - nice....

We have come further today than previously - mainly because moorings on the river that we can get on are few and far between - in fact I have written a useful document for anyone wanting to cruise a 62' narrow boat on the Great Ouse - DON'T DO IT! the end.

We found somewhere to fill up with diesel - not that we have used that much but we found somewhere much cheaper, accessible and also there is nowhere else to buy any for the next couple of weeks so it seemed like a good idea - we also filled up with water and so we are lying quite low in the water. Hopefully this won't be a problem with the mooring because it seems a bit silty! Oh well if we are stuck in the morning we have been taught some tricks to get us off - mainly me on the outside gunwale, jumping up and down to help loose the tension on the mud!

We had three locks today but the last one was operated by a lock-keeper so was dead easy - the others ....well let us just say that the bikes (what remains of them) are now on the roof!

No more locks for a while and only a couple between us and Cambridge. We have contacted a chap, Frank, who mends bikes from a canal boat in Cambridge and he reckons that we can moor there for longer than the stated 48 hours so we are planning on getting there on Monday or Tuesday so that we can dump the bikes on him to see if they are repairable. To be honest at present I never want to see them again but I am sure that they will be useful at some point!

Paddy hasn't jumped in again luckily and is finding the whole experience quite tiring I think - judging by the way that he is flat out now in any case. For the dog-lovers amongst you here is a photo of him waiting for John to return from doing a lock.

We are moored tonight in a totally illegal mooring since we have not paid the £18 to be a member of GOBA and these belong to them. However we are in the middle of nowhere and can't imagine that anyone is going to worry about us - couldn't be more different from the previous moorings we have been on. If we hear anyone tonight then they are REALLY lost. We have only had 2 boats ( well plastic pigs) go past us and none coming in our direction since leaving Huntingdon yesterday morning so it's not exactly busy here.