The people you meet

There is such a variation of types of people on waterways. We have met many. Last night it was Deb and Dale who moored in front of us at Bablock Hythe. Lots of jovial shouting as they came into the bank, with Deb (as I did) not sure she could make the jump! We got chatting to them later when we realised the pub near the moorings didn't open on Tuesdays! They knew of another one 20minutes (?) up the road in Northmoor. They had bikes, we were on foot, so more like 30 minutes for us. We spent a mad couple of hours with them at the Red Lion, swapping stories of boating embarrassments mainly involving 'gardening' as we call it: inadvertently plowing through overhangs and in my case shrieking "the chimney hat, the chimney hat!" as if that would save it from being whisked off by an especially vicious branch. Deb's tale was of being in sole charge of the boat as Dale stepped off muttering 'mind the weir' . The force sent her into a 360 degree spin, hitting another boat and causing a fisherman to leap to his feet. As she said; how she managed to turn a 54' boat in a 40' wide canal, she will never know. Amidst all this she found time to applaud the fisherman for his catch, a small fish on the end of his hastily retrieved line, to which he grumpily replied, 'that's the bait' !
These mishaps always happen with an audience too, the gongoozlers. Not funny at the time!

Deb and Dale went back to their boat for sausage casserole on a bed of wheetabix! Totally bonkers.

Tonight we looked for the non existent but marked in the book moorings at Tadpole ( great name!) Faringdon, so instead we are on a mooring upstream of Rushey Lock and intend to walk back to what looks like a nice pub at Tadpole.
Boating's one slow pub crawl really.