An English Country Saturday

 Ships cat Gertie is having a whale of a time here at the marina. There are plenty of other cats to chase and they all seem non aggressive. She goes off goodness knows where for hours at a time, but always comes back to Herbie to check in and blag a meal or a treat.

Today we popped in to look at Cropredy Gardening  Club's annual show. It's hardly Chelsea flower show, but the little village hall had some cute exhibits of prize winning stuff like "four potatoes" or "Best tray of mixed vegetables", and of course there were best cake competitions.  After touring exhibits (which took about ten minutes) we took tea and cake , then retired to the Red Lion for a pint of whallop. What's not to like. This is real rural England.  

Just down the lane from the pub is Cropredy lock, so we thought we'd better go and have a look.  It is of course padlocked and chained shut because of the water shortage. There are boats moored above and below, but they won't be going anywhere for some weeks.

Back at Herbie the painting continues. The side hatch lid is now complete apart from a second coat of the red stripe.  

it doesn't look much but it is significant because it was previously the most rusty and pitted thiing on the boat.  The doors below were pretty bad too but now they're sanded and rust treated and ready for undercoating tomorrow.  They look terrible in this photo but in fact they're sanded really smoot and flat. 

With a bit of luck they'll come out as well as the aft cabin doors which are now finished and looking good.

Look at those reflections!

This is all more tortoise than hare but we're moving forward.