A marvellously good egg.

Wooded hills and open meadows were the order of the day, it was cloudy though which made it cold.  We set off in advance of the other three boats as we had to stop off at Farndon Marina just outside of Newark to have the engineer there look at WaL to see if he could help.   

One good thing about the boat yard is the nice wide entrance but as the visitors dock was taken up by a small cruiser getting diesel plus the wind was gusting too so we took the decision to moor outside the marina on one of two floating pontoons while we waited for Martin the engineer to become free.
He came over to us and the first thing he said was "Oh you are much longer than I thought"  First thing to do is to get the boat into the service bay, this meant reversing into the marina entrance filled with cruisers and simply being polite one has to say they are not made of steel..... I was slightly terrified of breaking a couple of them but David was filled with confidence. I was next to him clutching fenders just in case, he set off, wind gusting, river flowing boats sticking out but it was a faultless display of wonderfulness and I began to relax.

This is a before picture and tomorrow I will take an after shot that I forgot to do.

Now Martin is now one of my new best friends, he says yes to all things and is a thoroughly good egg.

Wonderful Martin.  I lent him my gardening kneeling mat.

Steel plate to protect the paintwork

Then with a colleague standing on the wee stool footrests and heaving like a thing possessed on the tiller and it came good.  We were surprised and thrilled with the results.  Wonderful Martin even after it had cooled rubbed it down and sprayed it with primer which is a matching grey.  I gave him my best coffee and best Italian Biscotti which he liked.  
What a star he is.

So time was getting on now and after fond farewells we gritted our teeth and headed out right into a cold north wind into our faces for the remainder of the trip into Newark, it would have been twenty minutes less but the lock keeper kept us waiting, I thought he was filling the lock for us but no, he admitted to have been looking the other way and didn't see us floating about avoiding boats and buildings.

Finally the lock had emptied but still another ten minutes as he and David were laughing together and didn't see the lock had finished!

This below was us arriving to the moorings we breasted up against Clarence, this photo was snapped by Derek from Pizza Express where we soon joined them for warmth and hot soup basil and tomato plus I managed to choke down a slice of tiramisu.

NB Seyella you weren't the only ones who re-lit the stove that night.