Saturday and we put the guys to work!

On Saturday morning, or as big Neil called it, the middle of the night, we got up at about 8 to have brekkie because we were heading up the Foxton Locks – as it happened we were the first ones up – two down before us. But not much traffic there today at all.

Little Neill is working the locks with David and a volunteer lock keeper.

Big Neill is waiting to open the gate and also keeping Enzo under control.

It was quite a quick trip up as we didn’t have to wait for anyone else to come down, and we moored up at the top, and more activity ensued:

·      Neill fixed David’s bike,

·      I prepared the green curry paste for dinner, baked the bread and then we all munched on some of it as …

·      we set off to investigate the incline plane. Magnificent engineering, as are the locks. Bread wasn’t bad either.

·      But wait, there is a choice of pubs below, and true to our friends Mick and Julia, we went into Bar 61 for a drink…

This is where we used the interactive app which we loaded on to my phone. When we stood at this place and aimed the phone towards the incline plane, it showed a moving picture of how it had looked as a boat came up in the caisson. Really impressive - both the technology and the incline plane!

Back on board for BLATs (bacon, lettuce, avocado and tomato) for lunch, using fresh home made bread, and then a short cruise to Bridge 55 near Laughton. Lisa on What a Lark has often mentioned on her blog about how beautiful it is along this stretch, and she's right - it is.

Enzo investigated the roof then came back to consider whether the towel was a suitable place for him to rest.

No, he wanted to be held while Neill steered.

Our mooring place - lovely sun on the solar panels, and a peaceful view for the evening.

Talk about busy in the kitchen: I made more bread as the first two loaves disappeared rather quickly, put the chicken curry into the oven – it was Donna Hay’s green chicken curry, but with substitutions (lemon juice instead of lime, ginger root instead of galangal, chilli flakes instead of green chillies, spring onions instead of shallots, and no fish sauce) so really it isn’t Donna Hay’s green chicken curry at all! But it did taste very yummy anyway. And to be honest, not very different at all from the DH version.

While dinner was cooking, big Neil reupholstered the first of the bar stools for me – little Neill stripped off the old torn covering in preparation, and big Neil made them better than they have ever been – with padding no less! Yay!!!

Big Neil upholstering

Little Neill has finished the stripping off of the old seat covering so he's cuddling that dog again!

 Not sure what David was doing but he was suspiciously quiet …