We had plenty of time now to clean Willow and make it ready to hand back to our friend. Or, rather, his daughter, as he wouldn't be there himself.
So we swept, wiped, washed, polished - even touched up the paintwork. The mooring outside Tesco at Bull's Bridge was perfect for this. Despite us having bags of time, even after tying up on his mooring, we ran out of time. Our friend's daughter had to wait for us to finish hoovering and loading the last of our belongings into the car. And I'm sure we left the paintbrush and small pot of white spirit in the well deck! Oh dear!
And so comes to an end this most incident-packed narrowboat jaunt we've had.
Engine hours at the start: 236.8
Engine hours at the end: 352.7
Total hours: 115.9
If this seems on the low side bear in mind that the engine was switched off in all the Thames locks (and all the time we were propless!)
In the three weeks we did 414 miles and 175 locks. You don't half clock up the mileage on the Thames!
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And now here's something from today, Thursday 16th September 2010.
Cyclists on the Tour of Britain on their way from King's Lynn to Great Yarmouth passed through Norwich city centre at lunchtime. These weren't the leaders - two had gone by five minutes earlier.
Following the one hundred or so riders was what looked like an endless procession of support vehicles, laden with spare bikes. There seemed to be more cars than cyclists!
And preceding everything - and in the middle and at the end - dozens of police motorcycles and cars. It took only about ten minutes for the entire convoy to pass through. There was a great atmosphere in the crowd, and I came away smiling.
2 comments:
Glad you got home and finished the trip safely. Your friends must be pleased at the way you've worked on caring for their boat.
I hope so - we might want to borrow it again!
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