Is it summer yet?

Thursday, 25 April 2019

Is it summer yet?

Wednesday (17th April) at 05:45

at Bourne End

it dawned quite misty but soon cleared.

We had places to go and people to see which involved hiring a van for the day. First we went to Ikea in Reading for two small kitchen chairs (we'd decided that the ones we had took up too much space) which would sit neatly under our dining table and a shelf for the kitchen to give me more work surface, then to Henley to collect my new chair ...

I'm so pleased with Still Rockin's new look.

It has been a very warm day and at 7pm ...

we sat on the deck very relaxed watching the sailing dinghies do their stuff.

Good Friday it was time for us to move on ...

and we were turning into the river by 9 o'clock ...

continuing down stream.

We'd noticed as we were moored at Bourne End that the trees opposite had been quite severely cut back and yesterday as we'd been walking into Bourne End for some provisions we met a local chap and I asked him if that land belonged to the National Trust as I was wondering if whoever had cut them had needed permissions from the EA (Environment Agency) as well as the land owner and he told us quite an interesting story ...

he told us that the Sailing Club had arranged to have them cut back as they were 'taking their wind'. What? Apparently the overgrown trees were preventing their sailing boats to have the experience they wanted because of lack of wind. He went on to tell us that the members of the club had even put in very strong objection against a planning application for a local resident to rebuild his chalet type house on stilts because of flooding for exactly the same reason ... the building would be 'taking their wind' because it would be slightly taller than the original building. Fortunately the planning committee pointed out that the wind was not a reason for denying the planning permission.