Our 5 Angels?

Our regular readers may remember that in January we visited my daughter & family in Australia and also Marilyn who lives in Perth, Maz is a friend from way back when we were teenagers and I was an apprentice in Swindon, as she was visiting the UK this month we had arranged for her to come and visit us aboard the boat. Unfortunately her dad was taken into hospital so her trip had to be brought forward; but just this morning we had an email containing the good news that Cyril, her dad was out of hospital so Maz was able to to come and see us on Sunday. Problem is… that we aren’t scheduled to be back at Heyford by then, but we decided that maybe we could reach Banbury.

We left Kingwood Junction bright and early as we had the 21 Hatton Locks to do. We arrived at the top lock and tacked the first two on our own, but just as we entered the third lock a young man ran up to us and asked if he could ask a favour, could we wait so that they could share the lock with us? Could they? I should say so, Joy said she could have hugged him, especially as they had a crew of five young men, and moreover they had to be back at Calcutt Marina first thing tomorrow. With the help of these five ‘angels’ we made fantastically good time and by 7pm we were in The Boat Inn Stockton buying them a well earned pint having covered twice the distance that we had planned. So many, many thanks to our new friends Alex, Andy, Joe, James & Phil.