Ganache, Wedding Cake and Diversity

So the time had come for What a Lark to part company with the fun loving crew of NB Waterlily, we were sorry to as the pair of them had been marvellous travelling companions.  

Neil took this the other day and I stole it.

Pauline & Neil have their own schedule to keep.   

We set off at about 9am, I was going to give Pauline a big hug goodbye but as these things happen, a narrowboat went past heading for the lock just around the corner, David keen to join him leapt off the end undid the ropes and away we went waving instead.

Pauline gave us these…. 

Delicious. 

Reader it is quite true that on passing them over to us, Pauline apologised for the ganache not being properly set, now Reader I ask you, do you think these should be apologised for?  They were FAB!!!!!

 I am ever so sorry Pauline but I still have your plate!  I will return it.

So on we went upstream today instead of downstream, but the pull of the water was fine.  

A lady lock keeper was on duty at Reading, we paid our licence of £44 and away we went on the Two Day Oxford Dash.

Here is a selection of the sights to be had.  Amanda and I played the game of Spot the most ghastly house, they were several winners.

Impressive building in Reading.

These two were our favourites, although way too big for me to keep clean.

Too much glass for me

Ugly ugly ugly and what an un-fitting door?

Well one of the locks but I've no idea which one.

Love this

What were they thinking?   Plus no chairs are matching.

Yep love this, although a bit too ornate

Beyond doubt the winner.
All views expressed here are those of the author,  not much offence intended.

So a nice jaunt up to Goring.  I am told George Michael lives here but we didn’t see him.  We did however have to offload Amanda to the train station today, being a Sunday she has to get back to her ’Job’.  She has been such a help to WaL and Waterlily as both boats wanted to hurry along.  Thank you deary.

Back onboard we went into the lock which was very close.  Another lady was operating the lock, we didn’t see one last year the whole of the way down to Brentford.  Diversity is a wonderful thing me thinks.

I found the stretch from Goring towards Oxford a bit dull, trees around so not many sights to see, and my interest was not helped by it being rather cold right in the middle of the river and windy too.  I volunteered to go make hot drinks magnanimously.

Bit of Swallows and Amazons going on here.

I had four layers on and David was wearing gloves, mad dogs and Englishmen comes to mind

Saw these, but they moved so a bit fuzzy

Work going on at Pangbourne Bridge

Why does the EA not dispose of this I wonder?

This was a bit like Roulette going through here

This was Wallingford bridge

Oh dear.

We started looking for a place to moor for the night in the region of what we considered to be half way to Oxford, moorings marked on the map but all full, so out into the countryside again.  on a quiet section there was a stretch with a cruiser on, we could comfortably fit on behind him so we did, leaving a gap of about 6-8ft between us with our back end in some light shrubbery.  We had almost finished mooring up, taking care not to step onto the long grass overhanging the water thinking it was terra ferma, when a face pops up from the "Wedding Cake" type cruiser in front, he said “I have a generator going, its an automatic one as I haven’t any gas at all onboard, I am just saying as I don’t want any aggro”, well actually we couldn’t hear it above the sound of the wind blowing and the trees rustling so we said ok, and away he disappeared again, not to be seen again.  But is this correct?  Do cruisers have automatic generators who's controls cannot be over-ridden?  Are they exempt from normal 8am to 8pm rules? Is the Thames different in someway?  We have been told this summer somewhere that our licence is on condition of NOT doing this?

Any way the thing was quiet, we were tired and we sleep at the back of  Wal.  No problems were had.

Having had bacon, lettuce and avocado sandwiches for lunch, with some flapjack later, supper was just cheese on toast with spicy chutney on top.  

PS  These were left over from Reading.  This was a VERY low bridge, I just got these two shots then David yelled down! as we went FLYING through, he really did think WaL's red paint was going to be added to the other colours all along it

Sort of looking ok here but....

Convinced here we would crash, water flow was very strong here... What a man eh? No crash.

Made it.