Newbury

Scully has her own fan club- everywhere we went in Newbury people stopped us and asked if they could stroke her....and she lapped it up!  We went into The Catherine Wheel Friday evening and had the tastiest meal ever..It  was definatly on par with the Malt shovel at Hartshill. We had creamy mashed potato. pie and minted mushy peas. The bar man even bought Scully an enormous pork scratching ring. Nether of us could move very well afterwards..Greg only managed to drink 1 pint of beer. Saturday morning we decided to wander round and do some shopping, before setting off again.
Drummer was new to the job of pulling the day boat....he was a bit skittish and didn't like bikes very much, he was gorgeous though.

Greg taking a leap of faith to get back on the boat.

We got as far as Woolhampton to find out that the road bridge had broken and that we were going to have to moor up outside the pub 'The Angel'. Greg got chatting to a guy we'd come through a couple of locks with called Ben who had one of the old engines that made a lot of noise and blew smoke rings. Eventually CRT got it fixed about 8 o clock and we set off again only to get stuck at the next road bridge because it stopped working at dusk!!!!

We moored up at the meadow again and guess who all came back? Yes Greg's best friends. He had no chance of doing much metal detecting with this crowd around. Meanwhile I caught up with the washing (who would believe that you could wear so many clothes out on a boat) and had a good tidy up.

The first lock of the day has a road bridge directly after it.

Back to Reading and the traffic lights.

We did some shopping at Reading and started to head back up the Thames...It all looks so different going back.

We found a lovely place to moor, fed the fish at the side of the boat and settled down for the evening.

Peace at last.

Happy days.