And on and on

Tony on Timewarp had told us that although most mooring sites on the Oxford were strangely quiet this year, Newbold had been very busy when they came through. It's three hours from Ansty to there, so we had a later departure this morning, planning to arrive between half ten and eleven. Ansty was OK from the nighttime disturbance point of view, though sleeping with the Houdini open meant that the M6 made its presence felt.

An Ashby hire boat set off just before us; they were exemplary boaters, a little slower than us perhaps but not excessively so. I thought about persuading them to loose us by but decided it wasn't worth the hassle. In perfect weather we chugged our way along with the West Coast Main Line to keep us company. The swing bridge at Rose Narrowboats is kept open most of the time these days, saving a bit of fiddling around.

Old Oaks Wood moorings were pretty busy as indeed were the ones at Newbold when we got there bang on half ten. The hire boat took the last of the decent moorings with rings, so we tied to a ring at the bow and put a pin in at the stern. The hirers said that they were only stopping to look at the church, shop and eat lunch in the pub. When they left, we pulled forward and are now neatly tied to rings fore and aft with fenders deployed from other rings. Regular readers or those familiar with Newbold will know that the washwall here is heavy duty piling with deep indentations, more like riverside piling than canal.

I checked the batteries as planned. Confusingly, the charge current had dropped to just on 9 amps, not the 15 of yesterday afternoon. There was no sign of overheating, what's more. Peter Mason recommends ringing his contact at the supplier, PB Batteries, to discuss the situation. Before I do that, I'll get a hydrometer from Halfords when we stop to Tesco shop on Friday and laboriously check all the cells. It's the only way to know just what's going on.

After coffee, we popped down to the Co-op for some bits and pieces and found the basics of what we want, but not much else. It's an inverse Tardis of a shop, much smaller inside than it looks from the outside. I guess we've been spoilt by the new one in Willington.

We've had a quiet afternoon reading and doing puzzles. The forecast tomorrow is largely rain and cold with it, so we'll take another of our spare days here and move on on Friday.

And finally, the Begonia which was a present from John and Nev clearly likes narrowboat life:

Just hope it doesn't topple over!