Crook in Crofton and Making Plans

I woke up this morning feeling a bit dodgy in the old tum tum department - the beer from the pub last night had a few strange lumps in it, perhaps it was that!

We moved onto the service point at Great Bedwyn and did the deeds plus had a quick walk up to the local bakery for bread and milk.  The famous Lardy Cake had been recommended from that Bakery, but in my delicate state I decided not to and Elaine is a semi-veggo so she declined it too!

We got going about lunch time.  Sammie was also behaving very strangely and shivering, he didn't have the same beer as me so we ruled that out - we reckon he may have been stung by stinging nettles again!

Elaine was fussing him on the boat so I went up to prepare a lock.  There was only a couple of feet of water in it, so I opened the paddles to empty it.  A boat was approaching, the chap was going mental blowing his horn and waving his arms about as if it was his lock ... how the hell could he see how much water was in it and why would I fill it for him when it is virtually empty!  I had gone back, collected the boat, put it in the lock and had closed the gate when he finished tying up ... that is how far away he was!  He stayed on his boat looking really pissed off!  When we passed him I said, "Mate it was in our favour, it was nearly empty".  He muttered something under his breath ... maybe because he was single handed he thought he should get preferential treatment!   As we have mentioned before there are some strange boat people down these parts.  (No offence to anyone down these parts!)

We arrived in Crofton - we had only done a couple of miles but I felt decidedly dodgy and Sammie wasn't feeling any better either, so we decided to pull up for the night.  Elaine was talking to a nice couple with a dog outside the boat - turns out they are blog readers - but she forgot to get their names.  (Sorry, Guys - I was distracted with my two patients!  El x)

That's us in the middle ...


We had a small lunch, then I decided to have a lay down ... hour and a half later, woohoo, felt great so decided to take the dogs for a walk.  (El here ... I think I prefer it when he is crook - now he is dancing around the boat like a maniac!)

Great area for the trains, they run really close to the canal ...

 

We met a really friendly horse ...

...he followed us along the fence line.

 

It was the most gorgeous evening ...

Back to the boat for a very nice beer. 

We have been talking a lot lately of our future plans - as in, we always seem to be talking of our future plans!  What we have decided for the immediate future is that we will sell Caxton at the end of this cruising season.  We have spoken to Aston Marina but we haven't heard back; we hope to go into there on 1st November.  We will then probably list it with ABNB but if anyone out there is interested in a very reliable and capable liveaboard boat please drop us a line, as we would love to sell it before we list it with a broker.

We will do a detailed advert later.

If we sell it straight away we will buy a motorhome and, depending on the time of year, either head to southern Europe in search of heat or travel around the UK and Scotland.

We are both definite that we don't want to return to Oz soon (El especialy doesn't want to take the animals back), so barring the collapse of the Aussie dollar we are still looking at real estate over there, plus here, plus Europe .... only one property, not one in each unfortunately!  So many decisions to make but so exciting planning the next phase!