Perfect Harmony

Perfect Harmony
Moored at Huntingdon

Friday 7 June 2013

7th June '13

We had rain this morning - quite a bit of it in fact. We were just thinking that a fire would be good if we were going to stay any longer when it started to clear. 30 minutes later and we were off and the sun actually made a short appearance! This was early afternoon I hasten to add. Sadly our neighbours weren't at home so we weren't able to say goodbye, but hopefully we'll bump into them again at some point.

The wonderful bit was that we heard cuckoos today - several of them. Graham and Jill from Armadillo said they'd heard them the day before and now we can confirm it. I know they are not very nice birds and take over other birds nests and kill their babies, but they are one of the quintessential sounds of summer and a definite childhood memory.

We were making good progress, despite a large number of locks and not meeting anyone coming out of them, when we arrived at a lock with a boat in it and an older gentleman climbing down the lock ladder when he disappeared. We pulled in quickly and John dashed off to investigate as I tied the boat up, and it turned out that he had slipped on the wet rungs and landed in the boat (luckily) but given himself a nasty shock and knocked his shoulder and calf. We helped them through the lock and despite telling him to stop and have a cuppa, they left for the next lock. We got through as quickly as we could and managed to catch them up at the next lock which wasn't far, and a boat was coming through - slowly - very, very slowly. It was their first unaided lock poor things, and they were terrified of doing it wrong. This gave our elderly gentleman time to have a cuppa and some painkillers and I gave him my Arnica tablets. They were a lovely couple, just sold their house and thinking of buying a narrow-boat so had come on a holiday one to see it they liked it. What a game couple they were.


Here they are disappearing into the distance!

We arrived at Newbury but not until after 6 which seemed good enough reason to have a takeaway! We have moored at the western end of the town, completely opposite of where we were last time, as our friends Paul and Rachel are coming up tomorrow to camp and they are going to be somewhere in this area. A good excuse to wander around the shops tomorrow and possibly another takeaway! I shall fast on Monday - all is taken into account!

The boating community is a small world as illustrated today by NB Free Spirit informing me that they follow NB Armadillo's blog and will be looking out for them as they are both heading towards each other and had met previously on another canal.

I contacted our friends Ian and Allison (not the Dave and Allison ones - the IAN ones) thinking they were on the Thames as per their plan, but apparently they are stuck in the marina as some coots decided to make a nest on their fender and are awaiting their 3 chicks leaving home. We're a caring lot us boaters!

So Newbury for a few days and then onto some white water rafting - watch this space next week!

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