A bird and plane watching run to Tattershall

1 July

It was another quiet night at Anton's Gowt, apart from the cries of the rowers as they hurtled past the mooring. In one case, a pair stopped for what appeared to be the mother of one of them to come onto the pontoon and give him a pair of sunglasses. Not quite the Steve Redgrave touch, somehow.

I took a bit of time on a slow connection to fill in the questionnaire on the Cheshire Locks project site. This is a well worth while campaign to get the locks between Kidsgrove and Middlewich refurbished and repaired, and needs all the support it can get.

The other interesting thing about Anton's Gowt is that it did have a problem with youths swimming off the moorings. Not necessarily troublesome in itself, except that of course it didn't stop there, and there were soon complaints about drinking, bad language and all the rest.

So they've put up a lot of signage, locked the access to the main pontoon, so that you need a BW key, increased the police patrols in the area, and installed a mosquito buzzer on a pole.

This is one of these fiendish devices that emits a high pitched squeal. Older folk can't hear it, but it discourages youngsters from hanging about.

I'm not sure what I feel about that myself – I'd rather use education and relationship building to reduce bad behaviour, but the combination certainly seems to have done the job in this case.

We made an early start this morning, and Sheila boated gently up to Tattershall, watching for unusual birds as she went. We both did a bit of photography on the way, but the results are going to need a bit of work before I can publish them, I fear. We saw an unusual duck, a lot of the usual suspects, and several barn owls, in at least two cases, flying along with prey in their beaks or claws.

I can also report that the Packet Boat at Belle Isle is definitely open for business, and seemed to be well patronised.

As we got near Tattershall Bridge, the wild life was replaced by low flying aircraft. RAF Coningsby is obviously hosting a fair number of participants for next weekend's show. I've spotted any number of Typhoons, some F15s and lots of a delta winged, single tail finned beast I can't quite identify.

We've had a quiet afternoon, working on some more of the Braidbar quiz, alternately basking in the sun and retreating into the cabin, and anxiously refreshing the BBC website to keep track of Andy Murray's performance in the quarter finals.

Tomorrow we go on to Kirkstead Bridge.