We went for a 5 mile walk up through the countryside around Radford Semele this morning,  Warwickshire is particularly beautiful just now, the air heavy with the scent of blossom. 

 Old barn

 Field Pansy

 Another old barn, a bit more tumbledown

Thatched cottage in Whitnash

We had a knock on the boat this afternoon from Andy, fellow boater & blog reader. He had spotted us & popped up to say hello, we had a natter & then he pottered off, us settling down to watch the snooker when I remembered a blog I used to read, Lyra's Adventures, sure enough it was the same Andy, it was nice to say hello  & put a face to a name.

Andy didn't bring Lyra with him because of our cats so maybe we will meet her next time.

We are very impressed with our solar panels, I don't do amps & watts etc but normally we run our engines for 4-5 hours a day. That means we can watch 2-3 hours TV, run our small fridge & charge the usual phones, netbooks etc. 

Yesterday was the 1st full day & at 8am the smart gauge was at 64, normally we would have ran the engines for a couple of hours but we left it to the solar & by 2.30 pm the SG readout was at 78. We then watched TV for 2 hours ( snooker!) & the read out was 77 so not bad at all.

During the evening we ran the engines for a couple of hours as more snooker so we reckon when we are back to our normal viewing levels we will save a lot of engine running thereby saving on diesel & servicing costs. Of course at the moment we have wall to wall sunshine & longish days so this is probably as good as it gets....but any energy we do get from them is welcome as well as clean & free ( apart from initial layout costs!)

Tomorrow we need to move as our water is low, how far we go after the water point depends on the wind, if it is making things tricky we will moor up early.