No apologies ...

I just have to share these photos!

Monday (1st June) was a very eventful day ...

 Up early and by 7:15 we were pulling away from our mooring, leaving the mooring pins and windbreak in place ...

Looking upstream towards Hambleden ...

and downstream, the direction in which we'll travel today ...

Passing Medmenham Abbey in the early morning rays of sunshine ...

and a profusion of poppies in the garden

 Danesfield House atop the hill ... and babies galore ...

Crested Greebes

and Canada Geese

Beautiful yellow Iris

Swan and Mallards

Potatoes growing in a sack

 Approaching our destination and the camera has caught the sun on these tiny flying insects

Swan in trouble mode ... there was quite a ruckus just here between the swan, the Canada and Egyptian Gees and Mallards, all with young, but unfortunately the sun was in the camera and I didn't manage any photos

 fortunately they all came out of it unscathed ...

then came the piece de resistance ... and here's where I'm making no apologies

Half an hour after setting out we've reached our destination at Hurley Lock ...

 There are no boating facilities at our meadow mooring so every 7-10 days we'll need to pay a visit here to get rid of our rubbish.  I wondered why there was a queue at the lock and later discovered that the hydraulics had failed the previous afternoon making the lock unavailable.

 15 minutes later we're reversing Still Rockin' out of the lock cut

 The mill house at Hurley has been renovated but in my opinion not very sympathetically, see a previous photo of mine taken in March 2017. 

Whilst looking for information regarding the mill I found this postcard created prior to 1936

No apologies as we reverse to beyond the weirs ...

George can start to wind Still Rockin' here

 no need for bow thrusters today, there's loads of room to twizzle her here!

The river is starting to wake up

 As we rounded one of the bends on our return journey a canoeist pulled over to the side and quickly got his binoculars out and looked over us at the trees ... we looked up and saw an adult cormorant feeding its young just above its nest ... another first for us!

 Wild strawberries doing well and will add to the shop bought ones for my breakfast when we're moored up again.

A coot family

Nearly there ... the building across the river is Culham Court Chapel and I can just see our windbreak across the meadow ...

and frightening a duck as we approach

20 to 9 and we're home again!

PS: see that pigeon in the dead tree?  Well, watch this space ... the day's not over yet!