It all happened at Doddington Lock - organised chaos!

This morning it was time to move on as the delightful farmer, on whose land we had been parked, was waiting to turn his cattle out.

Whilst out walking with Sue previously, we had been up to Doddington Lock to check out the water situation  and the potential for a Tesco delivery. The original waterpoint no longer worked but Sue tracked down Andy, the owner of Hardwater Mill adjacent to the lock, in his back garden and he kindly said we were welcome to fill both boats from his yard tap if our hoses could could reach it.

So that was the plan then and the hoses did reach (we do have a lot of hoses even without No Problems')

 So here we are merrily blocking the downstream lock entrance and filling our tanks courtesy of the lovely Anne and Andy (who runs NB training courses). Now those of you on the overly populated ditches will think we're mad but we only see 3 or 4 boats a week and those are at the weekend. There was, however, a boat moored on the lock landing which had been abandoned there the previous day in the crazy winds. Needless to say; 5 minutes after we had the hoses set up than the aforementioned owner turned up wanting to lock down. G went and had a word and he was happy to have a brew and wait. Then, of course, another boat turned up wanting to come down (they were the only two boats I saw today). So, with their tank 3/4 full, we locked No Problem up.

 Which cleared enough space for the two to come down although they didn't seem to want to let Sue out!

 We then moored Sue on the meadow to wait for the Tesco delivery which would need carrying from the track, across a bit of field and then across NP's gang plank.

It took us ages to fill MR and we were still locking up when I spied the Tesco van turn in leaving Sue and Vic to start carting the shopping by themselves until I could leave MR and help! What a kerfuffle, by this stage - what with hoses, locking up and down, carting shopping and take off and landings in the wind - I was ready to go and lie down in a darkened room with a gin and tonic.

Not only did these lovely people let us have their water; they also offered to let us moor for the night in with their rescue sheep (I wish I'd thought to ask who or what the sheep were rescued from) but we declined as a half mile cruise was a bit short even by our standards. Also 4 dogs rounding up their sheep was not exactly the way to show our gratitude.

In between all of this, Anne showed us their plans and installation (under construction) for harnessing electricity via their mill race - pictures and more info on this in the next blog.