Herbie takes a short cruise.

 Someone once said to me ( or did I say it to someone?) Don't make plans then nothing can spoil them.

Well we had a sort of half plan for our current spell on Herbie and half of it has gone wrong, so that's about right.  The idea was to stay in the marina for a few days to let Gertie the cat acclimatise, maybe do a bit more painting and then to poottle up the hill to our favourite mooring spot below Claydon locks.  Well I got some painting done. Now the port side handrail is a nice shiny red to match the starboard side.

Before:

After:

Claydon bottom lock is still not properly fixed and only open for four hours a day, so we decided not to try going up there.  Quite a number of hire boats were stuck up there and the hire companies took the holiday makers off the boats if they wanted it.  I heard that some had provided hotel accommodation whilst others hasd spare boats so the punters could cruise off in another direction. A Black Prince hire boat, now empty was brought into our marina at Cropredy and this morning (Sunday) some of the marina staff moved it up to above Claydon for the Black Prince guys to collect.

I'm not sure any hirers will be all that happy in the coming week with three or four days forecasted to get to 37 degrees.  The news channels say that's not good at all for the elderly.  I looked up the definition of 'elderly' to find that I have already been elderly for 14 years!  So we're going home for a bit until it cools down.  Our house is relatively cool thank goodness and I don't think Gertie likes this heat much. We'll be off this evening crying 'Abandon Ship!!'

I got into trouble yesterday.  The gas ran out when Kath was making a cuppa, and when I went to change the gas bottle I found that the spare was empty too. Naughty me for not replacing that one when it ran out.

Anyway that gave us an excuse to go cruising this morning, all the way to the other end of our basin to get two new gas bottles (£109!).  Out in the middle of the marina basin, which is a lot wider than most, there was a lovely cool breeze. I don't suppose the marina staff would have been supportive of the idea of lettng us drop anchor out there for a few days. I thought it best not to ask.

In a previous post I mentioned the beautiful skies we seem to get hereabouts. Here are a couple of pictures from the last two nights.

Stay cool folks. We'll come back when  the temperature is more reasonable.