Sun

Our first full day dawned fine, but cool. As we prepared breakfast we were visited by a large white swan who was very insistent, and persistent. We quickly deduced that feeding the canal water birds was a common pass-time of boaters and that the birds had come to expect this. Hence the swan was quite determined that we should provide food.

Once underway we wound our way past villages, open countryside, other boats and soaked up the warm sun. Nina and I took the opportunity to do a little walking along the side of the canal. As we could easily outpace the boat there was no inconvenience in setting us down or picking us up.

About mid morning we discovered that we had missed a turn. The junction we had missed was about 400 yards back the way we had come, and the canal where we were was not wide enough to allow us to turn around. After some thought, discussion with other boaters, we decided that we needed to reverse about 200 meters to a nearby marina and use the entrance way to the marina for our turn. This sounded like a good plan. What we had underestimated was how difficult it was to reverse one of these canal boats. Getting it going in reverse was no problem, but controlling its direction was an entirely different story.

But eventually we got turned around, took the correct canal and proceeded into the countryside of cows, sheep, and wheat harvesting. Along the way we discovered that there are watering points at regular intervals along the canal where boats (like ours) can stop and refill their fresh water tanks. So called gray water is simply pumped into the canal, and toilet waste can be pumped out at one of the regular marina facilities.

We also discovered that along the canal there were parking rules. Some places one was not permitted to moor, other places allowed mooring for 24 or 48 hours only, other places for 14 days, and other places for long term permit holders only. This latter group seemed to make parts of the canal into the equivalent of a mobile home park.