PRANK finally gets its band cruise

Saturday dawned much fresher, but still hot and sunny so we were determined to make up for yesterday's non-cruise. Off we went northwards through Uxbridge and Denham and up to Harefield - and then back to Cowley. Rob had his first ever go at steering a narrowboat and was instantly competent! A legacy of his sailing holidays many years ago. Here he is taking us past Harefield marina

Uxbridge and Denham locks are an interesting contrast, Uxbridge being quite a shallow lock, and Denham, ten minutes away being the deepest on the GU canal at over 11 feet rise.

Cabin boy Jacob was with us for the ride and did a splendid job of Brasso-ing the ventilation mushrooms on the roof. Once again they sparkled.

Stopping for lunch we again had a short towpath band session and posed for the inevitable PRANK photograph (see an earlier entry for how our band PRANK gets its name) , courtesy of the cabin boy's camera skills.

Pete and Rob needed to get home so we need to multitask to get everything done. This meant boating and drinking up the remaining beer at the same time. Its a hard life!

After dropping them off at Cowley, we headed back down the Slough Arm to put Herbie to bed. The dragonflies were putting on impressive aerobatic displays. They look like biplanes whirling a looping about.

More weeds! We limped into the boatyard with the prop well weeded up. Delving into the weed hatch I unravelled from the prop a huge pile of weed, a mangled plastic bag, and a shredded shirt of some kind! Ah well, it only takes a couple minutes to do, and we'd had a good day.