and so to Bardney

3 July

After another hot and sticky night, despite leaving the slide partly open as well as the Houdini, we were up and about early, it being a relief to get up and wash in cool water.

Not long after half seven, we set off to carry on up river. I was steering, as Sheila reckoned I'd had only a short spell yesterday. The time passed pleasantly enough, though again there wasn't a lot in the way of novel wild life to look at, bar an owl sat on a post as we approached Bardney Bridge.

It wasn't a Barn Owl this time, and it was unlikely to be a Tawny, as they are most reluctant to come out in daylight, so we reckon it must have been a Little Owl again. You can tell we're getting blasé about our birding, when parades of Great Crested Grebe with young in tow just lead to casual, 'Oh look, there's another one' type remarks.

A minor source of anxiety was the non-performance of the email connection. Sheila had been trying to send an email about our mooring at the IWA National. Elanor has got our mooring pack for us, but it doesn't confirm that we've got one of the worker's moorings, and we just need the reassurance that we're not going to spend 3 weeks having to come back to the boat to run the engine every day.

So, of course, it wouldn't send. By this time, I'd been steering for an hour, so the excuse to hand over and see what was going on was welcome. The connection seemed fine, it was just the Dataflame access that didn't seem to be working. In the end I abandoned it, deciding to wait until we were tied up before exploring it further or ringing the support line.

Working up Bardney Lock was no trouble – we're really getting used to its little ways – and we were soon watering whilst a washload finished. A check on the email showed that it had come back, so whatever the problem was, Dataflame must have got onto it. I continue to be impressed with them as an ISP.

We've tied on the long visitor mooring pontoon above Bardney Lock. There's not a lot here, though it's unusual in that it has card operated shoreline posts. Unfortunately, our very ancient BW card wasn't recognised by the reader. I'm not surprised particularly, it's one we've had for about three years, and they've changed the rules about card use at least twice in that time.

Tomorrow, I'm off to the Waddington Airshow, then on Sunday we'll set off again for Lincoln, Newark, Nottingham and Burton on Trent, a significant journey in the terms of the continuous cruising guidelines, I hope.