Sleepless in ... Bulls Bridge!

... and not in any romantic way, I can tell ya!

We had what we thought was a good mooring last night, right beside the Tesco dry dock.  We decided to have a early night to try and catch up on too many late nights in London.  Before bedtime I took the doggies for a good walk around the Southall region; now I can see why the dry dock is full of rubbish - the whole area is a tip - putting rubbish in bins isn't high on the agenda of  the local populace.  I have mentioned before how we love living in the UK apart from the weather (except at the moment where the weather is equal to a Sydney summer!) but another huge difference is that Australia is incredibly clean with very little litter compared to parts of the UK.  Such a shame these little populations have so little pride in their areas.

Back to last night.  We were in bed by 22.00, drifting off to sleep with the waft of marijuana through the windows ... being smoked by a couple of local lads sitting on the side of the lock, which sent us to the land of nod quite quickly!

At 1.30 am we were jolted awake by some screaming banshees, who happened to be nine 'IC6'  lads partying by the side of the boat.  They were so close to the bedroom window that I could see the hairs on their legs!

They were drinking Glenfiddich and Coke - they even brought ice cubes with them!  They didn't jump on the boat or do anything malicious, they were just drinking, screaming and shouting very, very loud.  I am definitely no hero and there is no way I was going to tell 9 young drunken Arab lads to go away, so we just kept quiet and hoped they would fall in the canal and drown quietly.  The strange thing is that the dogs, who will bark at the slightest noise, didn't utter a sound.  I think they knew that it was safer to keep quiet!  Thankfully just after 3.30 am it pissed down with rain and they left!

At least being awake at that time has some advantages, I took a nice pic of the Bulls Bridge ...

Consequently we didn't get up early as planned.  When we got up the pavement next to the boat and dry dock was littered with the Glenfiddich bottle and box, the Coke bottle, the ice wrappings, all the empty disposable cups plus the unused ones - and all the Tesco bags that they had all come in ... what a bunch of filthy pigs.  

I sent another email off to Mr Tesco this morning stating that they are fighting a losing battle and wished them good luck on trying to clean the area up.

I like to try and do a nice, see-the-funny-side-of-everything blog, but these grubs really piss me off.

Now onto much nicer things ...

Whilst we were moored at the aforementioned Mr Tesco we thought we would do a big shop, and I mean a big shop.  When we got back to the boat, we had company ... John and Ali had tied up next to us!

Then along came Les and Jaq off from NB Valerie ...

Out came the beers and we had a real good catch up chat.  There was another chap there, hiding behind Ali, but I can't remember his name - he had just shared the locks up with Les and Jaq. 

A fair while later Triskaideka headed northwards ...

Bye guys, see you again this year we hope!

We then headed off southwards towards Brentford, on what was a very hot day.  Today there was plenty of water through the Hanwell flight, so we had an uneventful trip down the locks.  We are now moored up at Hanwell, trying to decide when we should head off up the Thames!