Saturday Sprinkle.

Hi Friends.

There was a very strange noise on our roof at around 7am this morning. I lay in bed and had to really think to remember what it was and then it came to me. It was rain yippee. Well it was yippee for all of 5 minutes and then it was gone again. The only thing it managed to do was dampen down the dusty towpath. We are so in need of rain, but from looking at the forecast it does not look likely that we are going to get a lot over the next few days.

As I got out of bed I felt like I was walking down hill, either that or I had been drinking in my sleep. We were listing into the towpath, which was a little odd. Normally when we list it is the other way because the water level is to low. It seems as if the water level went up over night and so we were listing the other way as the mooring ropes were a little to tight. So whilst I walked Pad, Keith was readjusting our mooring ropes, so that we were on an even keel once more.

Last night we had pulled the boat forward, on to some deeper water, because we were actually sitting on the bottom, so as the boat in front of us left, we moved into their place, hoping for deeper water, which is what we got thankfully. It is getting harder and harder these days to find deep water places to moor up. Everywhere is always so shallow, and that is due to the lack of dredging and the shallow draft of the pleasure boats these days. I know that the historic boats with a deeper draft than ours have real problems. They regularly have to moor up a couple of feet away from the bank and then have to use a gang plank to ge ton and off of the boat. Which is fine and dandy, but when you have a wimp of a dog like we do, gang planks are not great. Pad hates gang planks with a passion. He will eventually use one if he has to, but prefers to be carried. I have never known such a wimpish Collie.

With the usual morning chores done and dusted. We put on our walking boots and set off for a nice walk. It is my aim to get us walking for at least an hour a day whilst the weather is nice, because once we are on our coal run, we will be to busy. We walked to Denham Green and Denham station. We then walked back towards the gate for Broadwater and Korda Lakes. We turned left for Broadwater Lake and walked along the edge of a exquisite expanse of water, with a wide variety of waterfowl and insects. Even without our binoculars we could see Giant Grebe, Pochards, Little Grebe, Cormorants, Swans, Mallards, Tufted Ducks and others. We tried to walk around the whole of Broadwater lake, but got halfway round when we came across a sign saying "No Public Access" so had to retrace our steps. It certainly has a special beauty and charm. There were people out on boats at the sailing club. Across the lake we could see Keith's sisters house, so gave her a wave. Broadwater Lake is absolutely stunning, with oodle's of waterfowl and wildlife to look at.

This Comma Butterfly was just one of the Butterfly species we saw.

There were also a lot of bird and bat boxes up a long the river and lake, which encourages birds to next close to a feed source. I could have spent the whole day just walking around the lake, but lunch was calling and we were both rather hot and bothered, so we walked back to the boat having done 4.67 miles in all. I made some salad wraps and a cold drink and we are watching the qualifying for the F1 race tomorrow. We will do Korda Lake when we come this way again. The rest of the afternoon is going to be spent relaxing.