Spring Cruise: Day 8

Another police officer had arranged to come and see us today, so before that I took a walk up to see if the canal was open (no) and call into Tesco on the way back.  The DC arrived about 11, and wanted to speak to each of us individually, so I went to wait outside while she spoke to Adrian.  During the hour and a half that took, the fire brigade arrived to practise using a hose.

Then it was my turn to give another statement — which took another hour.  While he was banished from the boat, Adrian had been to Waitrose for some lunch.  After I’d had something to eat we moved the boat across the basin to the water point to fill the tank and run the washing machine.  We washed one side of the boat while it was on the towpath side.

Another email came through to say the canal was now open (incidentally, today’s police officer confirmed that the canal was opened briefly yesterday, until search officers found something and closed it again), so we walked up to visit the scene — really just to see if we’d remembered things correctly.  While we were there, a group of CRT people were also visiting, including the chief exec, Richard Parry, whom we had a chat with.

On the way back we routed via the big B&Q across the road to get some logs.  They didn’t have any real ones, so we got some coffee logs instead, which we’ve had before and quite liked.

Of course now we physically could leave Aylesbury, we can’t — because I have to go to work tomorrow for a day that I couldn’t get leave for.  There are no trains on the Euston line this weekend, which is why we’d planned to be back near the car — but here the station is close by and has trains.  We’ll escape on Sunday.

0 miles, 0 locks.  (39 miles, 42 locks)