Herbie 1 - Met Office 0

We nearly cancelled our trip at the weekend because the weather forecast was for heavy rain on Friday and Sunday, but we went out for Saturday and Sunday and didn't get a drop. Admittedly it did pour on Friday and we would have got a good soaking if we had stuck to our original plan of picking up our friends Jan and Stephen on Friday night and gone on into London.

As it was we had a great weekend. We saw two kingfishers on our way up the Slough arm, and then moored briefly at Cowley where the ladies visited a fabric warehouse and the men sounded out the Paddington Packet Boat pub. It's quite a plain pub, but friendly and the beer (Fullers) is good. Noticing they had Sky TV we decided we would call in the next day to watch the footy match twixt Portsmouth and Sunderland. J&S are big Pompey fans.

After lunch we continued on up through Cowley lock and on to Uxbridge where we moored near the Swan and Bottle (as we did last weekend!). Next day we did it all, including seeing the kingfishers, in reverse (by that I don't mean Herbie went backwards - any narrowboater knows that would be nigh impossible). Sunday roast at the Packet Boat was OK too, but sadly Pompey lost 2-0.

Nevertheless Stephen manages to keep smiling as he steers us under the M25 while Kath models her silly hat.

Whilst preparing the boat on Friday, I checked the engine mountings because we had been getting rather more vibration than usual. The forward pair both needed a nip up with the spanner, and the boat did go a lot more smoothly as a result. I must remember to check them more often.