Who would be a boater? Another gloomy story. Happy ending though.

Good grief, has it really been a week since our last post?
Last Tuesday we moved on as far as Elton, another beautiful village with some very pleasant moorings opposite the lock landing upstream of the lock.

You do pass some strange things along the river, not at all sure what this is.

The Crown, which is nearest the moorings proved to be full of the local W.I., all out for lunch, so we moved on up the hill to the Black Horse and excellent it was, can't remember the last time I had a fish finger sarnie but the one I had here was spot on.

Wednesday we moved on as far as the unofficial moorings above Ashton Lock, passing the lovely church and the remains of the castle at Fotheringhay. It was on this trip that what had been a slight rattle from the engine became rather pronounced but I was unable to pinpoint the source.The next morning, as we were running the engine to top up the batteries, the engine overheated. R.C.R. to the rescue, as usual the cooling system worked perfectly but the rattle had become louder and was found to be coming from the domestic alternator. Taking the advice of the mechanic we rattled our way up to Oundle and moored on Oundle Cruising Club. Once they found we were having problems they could not do enough for us, gave us the name and 'phone number of the best local engineer, hooked us up to the electrics and made us welcome in the club house. I 'phoned Mark, the engineer, who was there promptly and soon whisked the offending article out and headed off for his workshop. This was the new alternator that was only fitted in April and was still under warranty, Heritage Narrowboats who had supplied it really didn't want to come all the way to Oundle so gave us a full refund and humble apologies, not a bad result.

On Friday morning we walked up to town, twenty minutes from the moorings. Beautiful old town with some wonderful old buildings.
Mark returned on Sunday morning with a now whisper quiet alternator and soon had it reinstalled.
So tomorrow we are on our way.

Watch this space.........