Wonderful Wallingford

Today is our wedding anniversary; 39 years ago, it was persisting down in Aberdeen, and people told us by way of consolation that it meant “money in the marriage”. Turns out it means a great big boat in the marriage, but I’m fine with that.

We’re going out for a meal tonight, so had planned to eat on board as usual yesterday. This plan was thoroughly rearranged by Edmond and Brigitte of Anna, who suggested we come for a drink with them and Simon from Josephine. Both these are real Dutch barges, one (Anna) having been built in 1927, and the other a brand new Piper version.

One thing led to another, and we had a splendid evening in the John Barleycorn, talking boating and computers, mostly. After a couple of pints, Edmond suggested we have some food there, so we did that, and very good it was too.

As a result, there are now two double portions of liver casserole in the fridge to look forward to, but not tonight.

We made an earlyish start today, getting away at eight, and working up Goring and Cleeve Locks with a nice brother and sister pair on a small narrowboat whose name I did not spot.

There’s a good water point above Cleeve, so with the tank full, we plodded gently up the beautiful reach to Wallingford, arriving just before eleven to find the new moorings deserted.

The lido in the park alongside is doing great business, it being school holidays, and the weather continuing fine.

Sheila’s new MacBook arrived at Elanor’s this morning, hooray. I’d tried to buy it from the BT on-line shop, who had one cheap, but they mucked up debiting my credit card by not responding to a cross check from the card issuer, and by the time I’d nominated an alternate card, it was out of stock.

Instead, I went back to Apple, who turned the order round in 24 hours; it’s worth paying list price to get such effective service.

We've had a great day here, shopping and buying some second hand books in Oxfam who have one of their seriously large boaters' libraries in the town.

We’ll potter up to Abingdon over the next two days, in order to rendezvous with Elanor there on Friday. We’re looking after Sally, her dog, for a week, whilst she attends a WRG camp on the Basingstoke.