What a day! Everything went wrong. The aim was to get Grannie, two aged labradors and a mountain of luggage to Reading, mobilise the boat and then make for Wallingford if possible, although overnight mooring might have to be reviewed in the light of progress. So a box of frozen dog food, two folding bags, a collapsible table, my computer case, one cabbage and ... were strapped to the luggage trolley. Our plan was to take the tram to East Croydon and get the one direct train service per day to Reading. It was a good idea to build a bit of extra time in to get the train, so we arrived 40 minutes early. We might as well have not bothered. The train had never left Brighton as Virgin was waiting for train crew, so we decided to cut our losses and take the train to Clapham Junction which meant a tiresome transfer with stairs (bad for Grannie) over to the Southwest Trains platform for the Reading train. We just missed it. Half an hour later we were nicely set up on the next service, but at Richmond the doors failed and after a 25 minute delay we were all detrained. The next Reading train had been diverted in consequence, so we were told to get the next train to Staines and change again there. This worked and 1 hour and 25 minutes late we got to Reading. Pat, Grannie and dogs were to walk to Caversham Lock while I got a taxi to the marina to bring the boat round. This all worked fine, but when I got to the boat I found that the 240volt circuit breaker had popped and there had obviously been no power all week. Why I know not. So we had no food and the whole point of paying £100 to have shore power was negated. At least the batteries were fully charged, although with the solar panels, in the absence of mains use, they would have been anyway. Moored outside TESCO were our friends Terry & June on PLUTO. So after picking up the girls, we returned to moor up next to them to catch up and go shopping to replace our spoiled food.
Now we were seriously later than expected, so pressed on and at 5 pm took the advantage of mooring up outside Beale Park. Even this was not straightforward, for it took 4 attempts to find a mooring where some part of the boat was near enough to the bank to allow the dogs off. Supper of Spanish Chicken and a bottle of Pinot Grigio was a welcome end to a disastrous day.
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