Oh look, it's Milton Keynes again!

18th & 19th April

As we were getting ready to set off yesterday, the moorings warden Hazel Lloyd came by, taking our number and giving us one of her leaflets. Until this year she was doing the same job at Marsworth, and the impact on Cosgrove was noticeable. It used to be quite cluttered with boats which were clearly ignoring the time limits, but now it's very tidy.

She was also able to explain our disappointment last night. As I said last time, we'd planned to go out for a meal at the Barley Mow to celebrate Sanity's fourth birthday, and during the afternoon I'd used the excuse of having a letter to post to walk round there. They had the decorators in, but there was a big notice under the name board saying "Business as Usual".

Imagine our surprise and disappointment, then, when, having got ourselves all togged up in respectable clothes, we rolled up to find the main door shut. We went round to the side door, which was open, and the lights were on in the bar, but there was no one about, and the whole place reeked of emulsion, such that you'd never have wanted to eat there anyway.

We ambled, muttering, back to the boat, and dined a little belatedly on some goulash I'd got in the freezer, accompanied by peas and rice.

Hazel explained that the pub had changed hands at the start of the month, and wasn't due to open until the end. Heaven knows why they had the Business as Usual sign out.

In very cold and quite windy conditions we chugged off to Wolverton, stopping to do a thorough shop at the Tesco. This is always a trial for Sheila, whose vertigo makes the climb up the open iron staircase to the roadway from the canal a trial of terror. Coming back down, laden with full daysacks and carriers in each hand is even worse.

Nonetheless, we made it and took a break to have a coffee whilst I stowed the groceries. Then it was off again towards the centre of Milton Keynes. We'd half thought of stopping short at the Black Horse for our delayed meal out, but as it was Friday, and as we were both feeling a touch under the weather gastrically (nothing to do with the goulash, thank you), we decided to give it a miss. We'll take a rain check on the pub meal until we feel more in the mood to enjoy it.

When we got to Campbell Park, there was a decent space on the 48 hour mooring. It always used to be quite hard to find a space here, and there's no mooring warden at present, but perhaps the threat of a £50 charge per night for overstaying has had some impact.

After a belated lunch, we had a quiet afternoon, though I didn't completely squander the time. John on Acen had shown me how he'd improved the performance of his 12V pump out pump by rewiring the supply to avoid voltage drop. He'd done it by taking two lengths of 230V type flex and joining the three cores together in each, thus making two heavy duty cables. He'd used one for each side of the supply, and said that as a result, the pump was now lifting the black water much better.

I decided to try this with ours. I had some spare orange external type flex, a weather proof switch left over from our abortive purchase of a 230V pump, and some connectors to use on the other end. I cut out most of the cable which Braidbar had fitted, which was medium thick, but not as heavy as it might have been, and replaced it with the orange flex, rigged as I've described. A spin off means that there's now a switch at the pump end, rather than having to go back in the boat to switch it off.

The pump still runs, so that's a good start, but we'll only tell if it's made a serious difference when we next come to pump out. The hope is that it will improve the final clearing of sludge from the bottom of the tank. At the moment, no matter how thoroughly we rinse, we never get the Tankwatch gauge back to the green light that means completely empty.

Today has been a quiet day, with a lazy start, followed by shopping in MK. I've been helping to prepare some literature for SOW, and we ran a washload whilst running the engine for battery charging purposes. I also rang Limehouse Lock, and booked our trip up the Thames for after we've been to Cavalcade. We're going out at 1415 on the Thursday, 8th May, which should get us to Brentford at the top of the tide around five o'clock.

Tomorrow we'll head off again, stopping somewhere near Soulbury tomorrow night, and on to Marsworth for Monday.