A day at the Airshow, and then on to Lincoln

4th & 5th July

We left the boat on Friday afternoon, after charging the batteries as full as we could in the time available. After a very pleasant evening at Boothby Graffoe, in the company of Cathy and Cathy's mother and stepfather, Jane and Tom, we had a decent night's sleep, it having cooled down a shade.

In the morning, Tom and I went to Waddington Airshow, and had a real boy's day looking at the static displays and then watching the flying from the families enclosure. (Graeme is is out of the country at the moment.)

I had the chance of a brief chat with one of Graeme's colleagues, who had flown with him just a few days before. Meanwhile, the women and kids visited a playground and Sheila got some shopping in. It's not often that we have such a gender stereotyped day, but it's fun once in a while.

At the end of the afternoon, Jane and Tom kindly ran us back to Bardney Bridge, and we walked back to the boat above Bardney Lock. I'd been able to collect the spare part for the chair, which had been delivered to Graeme and Cathy's, but refrained from doing anything with it until today. In fact, we rather collapsed in the sunshine on the pontoon, drinking cold beers and eating a tuna salad.

Wildlife stories:

During Friday afternoon, as I was showering, a swallow flew in at the side hatch, round the saloon and out of the hatch again. I was left wondering what the strange noises were, but it turned out to be Sheila expressing her surprise at this event.

During yesterday afternoon, a pike took a fish just below the side hatch. There was a great swirling of water, followed by a lot of scales and some blood drifting about. Some junior pike were seen swimming around, so presumably they'd been getting a hunting lesson from the adult.

Walking back along the path to the boat, a guy sitting on the Bardney Bridge pontoon exclaimed at the sight of the seat part under my arm, which was comprehensively wrapped in bubble wrap and looked very white in the sunlight.

"I thought you were carrying a swan!" he said.

Today we had a fairly relaxed start, and Sheila boated up to Stamp End Lock. I finally got to unpack the chair bit, which is, happily, the right one. The only problem I have is that the swivel is attached to the underside of the bit I'm replacing with a tapered interference fit, and after five years of holding my weight up, it's very interfered with indeed.

I've tried some strategies involving propping it on two big hammers and hitting it with a smaller one, but it's not going to give in easily. What I really need is a small hub puller, to press the taper out of the holes, but that may well have to wait until we're up at Poynton, unless anyone at the IWA National happens to have one with them.

(Note to Bungle, Welsh Phil or other suitable wrgies likely to be at Redhill: the taper's around 20 mm dia, and is stuck through a bracket 65 mm by 50 mm, so I need a puller to fit those dimensions ;-} )

Following some email and phone calls, Waimaru has rendezvoused with us here in Lincoln, so we'll be eating with them tonight, and hearing their tales of travel to Liverpool and over the Leeds and Liverpool to the waters of Yorkshire.

I've already repaired their bow line with a short splice, after it was burnt through by some kids in Wigan overnight.

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.