Back on the River Cam....

 Moored somewhere nice on River Cam

OK, so the Mutt is intelligent…. well I liked her description of our mooring tonight, so I will go with that and have to agree with her!

It’s been one of those days today…. retired or not, you will always get one of ‘those’ days, and as I write a cruiser has just gone past at some great speed knocking poor NP about.. now they are turning… no they are doing bottom plates… well I can’t say wheelies can I?  This is a live blog tonight… Gawd it’s all been happening this evening at this spot… the guy in the house opposite deciding to use his motor strimmer for a couple of hours.. the boat in front is still partying very loudly, they guy in the field opposite has just put his gun away after running out of ammunition.. the guy with the strimmer stopped strimming then decided to top his batteries up and run the engine at 9.50pm, that has just shut off…. I wouldn’t have minded, but it smoked like hell, and with the weather the way it is, it just drifted a couple of feet above The Cam and went nowhere… Lucy attacked the cat a couple of boats away because the gunfire frightened her and she wanted something to take her mind off it …. and that was just since 7pm tonight!! My day of stress started at 8.50am this morning!  HELP!!!!

I have been trying to calm my awful day by relaxing and fishing this evening… desperately looking for some peace and quiet… Spose I am spoilt after my couple of weeks in ‘the sticks’.. well it is summer I suppose!

Anyway… The Five Miles From Anywhere pub… yes it was OK.. probably not one I would return to… but an interesting notice leading to the lovely garden area there….

“In the interest of safety, strictly no crockery, cutlery or glasses beyond this point” says the top bit if you can’t read it.. underneath it says “If taking drinks to the garden or play area, please return glasses to the bar, thank you”….  Seems there must be two people in charge of putting up notices!!

On going from our nightmare on Burwell Lode with all the weed.. we met the lockie who is in charge of some of the locks on the Cam, famous again we were.. he recognised NP as the one pulled out.. he told us that the Environment Agency have hired the Cams Conservator’s weed cutter to go and cut the weed today!!  Hey great stuff… today he said…

Well this is what we saw today…

Ah the Cams Conservator’s weed cutter!  Well and truly moored securely late this evening… this is the only vessel that can deal with the weed, there is only one, so I guess it didn’t get done today then!

Fishing… Well Andrew Denny on Granny Buttons is of the opinion that boaters and fisher-people don’t talk to each other, don’t like each other… well I have had no problem with fishermen… I do have problems with narrowboats with I am a fisherman though…. I fish off the back of NP, she is a cruiser, and the main reason we bought a cruiser stern is so that I can fish off the back in comfort.. but even if I am out there fishing narrowboaters never say to me… “Hey I gotta run the engine for a while, you OK with that?”  I am always OK with that, just would be nice if they would just ask… The biggest problem fishing off a narrowboat is people on the towpath behind me bringing all the left over bread and chucking it in the canal to attract ducks who skid in from miles away to feast… I wonder sometimes if I am seen at all!!

I am always cheery with fishermen on the bank… and they are with me.. I also scrounge of them.  It’s not easy to get good bait, usually having to use what ever is spare in the larder.. but late in the day, I will approach one nearby for some juicy live bait by swapping that with a cuppa and a piece of homemade cake..usually does the trick!