The birds round here seem particularly noisy. The ducks were making a racket late into the evening, and this morning I was woken up by the dawn chorus at about 5.30. I’m not sure if it rained in the night, or if there was a very heavy dew. Either way I was pleased to see that the polish I’ve put on over the past couple of days had made the water form into droplets.
I set off about 8.15, heading for the lock. There was a boat at the water point below the lock, which is also the lock landing — so I was wondering how I was going to tie up the boat while working the lock. But the chap from the boat signalled to ask if I wanted water, and I signalled back that I was going up the lock. He then grabbed a windlass and emptied the lock for me and opened a gate, which was really nice of him.
Once in the lock I got off the boat and worked my way up.
I was back in the marina shortly afterwards. There was no wind at all, which actually made spinning to reverse into the berth more difficult. Once secure I drove down to B&Q and got new smoke and CO alarms, which were easy to install. The BSS chap, Bim, was due between 11 and 11.30 so I had some time to kill. I took everything off the well deck, gave the whole area a scrub, and polished the paintwork. Bim arrived at almost 12, saying the boat he’d just been doing was terrible and had failed on multiple aspects. He completed our test is under an hour; there was just one thing I had to do to ensure the pass, which was get a strap to secure the batteries down; we used to have one, but must have been mislaid when the batteries were changed. What was quite pleasing was that Bim was very complimentary about Briar Rose and the state she was in.
I had a few other things to do and a bit of packing, and set off back home at about 2.30 — on what turned out to be quite a long slow journey.
1 mile, 1 lock. (11 miles, 2 locks)
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