1. A grove of trees – such a pretty route to the bins.
1b. It’s still fairly early (for us!) but warm enough that I have to shed my hoodie for my water-filling chores.
2. The river is much quieter as we go through Horning than it was on our journey to Salhouse on Sunday.
2b. We think we’ve “fixed” the problem with our boat but it recurs. We have to double back to Horning to await the engineer – we have to sit in a riverside pub garden in the sunshine, eating sausage rolls and drinking local beer. Such a hardship.
2c. We watch a dredger at work – impressive to have such massive machinery working on floating rafts.
3. The moorings at St Benet’s Abbey are fairly quiet. People come and go all day but it’s never busy, and when night falls, all the boats are pleasantly separated.
3b. What I thought was the Abbey is actually the gatehouse – with a mill built around its old walls. It’s much more interesting than the actual abbey – which is just structureless mounds of stones – and we both gasp as we walk inside the tower of bricks.
3c. The smoothness of the stones. More old graffiti.
3d. Sunbathing and reading on the bow again. A goose watches me eat my biscuits, cocking its head every time I take a bite.
3e. I cook a risotto. With dull knives and a glass chopping board – and a strange cooker and lack of utensils – I have to stay more focused than I do at home. It works out well.
4. The unusual shape of a bird catches my eye – it turns out to be a barn owl hunting its supper. We watch it swoop over the fields and it leads us to spotting deer, birds fighting in flight and other tiny birds catching flies.
4b. We’re watching for fish bobbing up for insects and both stare agog – then laugh – when a grebe appears from nowhere.
4c. A lovely sunset in a perfect place/position.
4d. A yellow wagtail hangs out with a group of pied ones – sometime in the last week we became birdspotters.
4e. I think I’ve lost the game but actually one neat move lets me win.
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