Old Boats and Swans Beak.

Hi Friends.

Having had a somewhat restless night. At one point I just lay in bed and listened to the silence that was all around me. I must have drifted back off to sleep, because I then woke up and it was 8am and my better half was getting up to go to the bathroom. I put the kettle on and noticed a bow getting closer. Something told me I knew this boat and low and behold it was Elaine and David on NB Patience. I quickly got dressed and poked my head out of the engine room to say good morning to Elaine who was steering the boat. David was working the lock, so I gave him a cheery wave. They are on their way to the National Festival at Beale Park in August. Keith walked down to the lock to have a chat with David, whilst I did us some breakfast. We will see Elaine and David in October for the Village at War at Stoke Bruerne. Having had breakfast and walked Pad, Keith and I then enjoyed a lovely stroll around the lakes between Denham and South Harefield. The views across the lakes which originally was used for gravel extractions is now a haven for allsorts of wildlife. Whilst walking alonside the Denham Quarry lake, we saw Giant Grebe, Herons, Common Terns, Mallards, Coots, Moorhens and that is just a small proportion of what lives there. Keith spent some of his younger days on the lake where he learnt some of his early boating skills and they still have plenty of boating taking place there today. We could see a group of children waiting to go out on the lake. We walked behind Harefield Marina and back out on to the road, before walking back along the towpath to the boat. We decided to move Hadar to The Horse & Barge at South Harefield, which took a whole 35mins to do 1.5miles! We are going to spend the weekend here, as we are hoping to have some visitors over the weekend.

As I prepared some lunch, a feathered visitor came a calling. It was this beautiful Swan with a lump taken out of the end of its beak. He was a cheeky fellow, knocking on the boat to ask for some bread. Of course I obliged, feeding him some bread which was a little dry around the edges. Not that he cared, he was only to happy to take it out of my hand and not in an aggressive way either. He had his fill and went on his way. I have set up the Tv ariel and we have a fantastic signal. We even have digital, so I can watch the F1 GP this weekend, if we are not invaded by to many visitors. We also have Film 4 which is always a good watch, when there is nothing else on. There is a WiFi signal from the Marina, but it is secured so we cannot use it. Just as well our T-Mobile signal is a good one. So this will be home for the weekend.

A Facebook friend had a close call last night, when he saw out of the window of his boat another boat approaching from the opposite bank, this other boat was on fire. Thankfully he had his wits about him. He untied and reversed out of harms way. The sad thing is, the people that had bought this boat, had only had it a couple of weeks. There has been a few boat fires recently and one has to wonder if these are due to people being careless or are accidental?