After such a busy weekend in London I spent Monday and Tuesday catching up with friends and doing the housekeeping. On Wednesday I was back in London where I visited the Quentin Blake exhibition at the new House of Illustration on Granary Square in the newly developed Kings Cross area. They are making a good job of the development and it has a cultural vibe (much needed, I must say). I met Caroline for lunch at the Royal Academy where we went around the Dennis Hopper exhibition. He only used his camera from 1961 to 1967 and he captured the era perfectly, especially as he only used black and white film. I would have loved to have stayed to watch his two movies, Easy Rider and The Last Movie but time waits for no man(or even for me)so I jumped on the tube to South Kensington where I was meeting up with Rose before she went to the Proms.

I was soon back on board Olivia and through the Claydon locks after which I enjoyed the rural lock free pound to Marston Doles. One thing that I have noticed more and more is that boaters don't seem to do any preparation before they cast off. Today I had a couple who were reversing back from a lock to the winding (turning) point. As they were all over the canal (as I would be if I were trying to reverse) we struck up a conversation and it transpired that they had decided to turn at this point as "it might be a while before we find another one". I was asked by another boat whether there was "a water point in the vicinity" and another was surprised when advised that there was not a shop for another two hours. Is it just me but I find that a lot of the pleasure is in the planning of the journey? Having said that I had a choice of either walking nine miles or taking two bus journeys. I decided on the latter which took three and a half hours!! Two of these hours were spent waiting for a connecting bus because the existing timetable means that one bus misses the other by about two minutes and both buses run every two hours.