Moved down from Hempstead to here in the morning, arrived to find only one vacant mooring. It’s not ideal for our planned family barbeque, but it will have to do.

Daughter Liz, son in law Simon, grandchildren Josh, Becca, William, Leo & Jess and father in law John all arrived at about 1:30 for the barbeque. Unfortunately where we were moored the bank was fairly steep and the grass verge quite narrow so there wan’t much room for the barbeque/picnic. There was a constant stream of walkers, cyclists and dogs going right past us. The weather was very hot and we were glad when later in the afternoon the tall willow trees gave some shade.

During the afternoon Heddi’s sister Caroline, her partner Stuart and daughter Cloe came to see us with their two enormous dogs. They have their caravan nearby for the weekend.

It was very busy with both boats and cars all day. There was chaos on the road and the water when the bridge broke down and wouldn’t open. It is a new hydraulic one which replaced the old manual one only a month or so ago. The sensors on one of the barriers failed and indicated the barrier was up when it wasnt. An engineer was called and for a couple of hours he had to stand with his hand in the mechanism operating the sensor manually!

In the evening Jan & Mike visited. Mike brought with them some excellent curries that he had made. We sat outside in the cool of the evening to eat. It was much quieter with only a few passers by on the towpath.