Knicker Crisis Averted!

Saturday 20th and Sunday 21st October, 2012 still in Goring.
We are still stuck in Goring by "Red Boards" on the Thames, and as we are likely to be here for at least a few more days, husbanding our resources has become a priority. We run the engine for a few hours each day to keep the batteries topped up, but we have plenty of diesel so that is not a problem. Water is more of a problem. We are now down to 3/8ths of a tank, which means that we need to keep our use of water to a minimum (to be sure to make it last through at least until Wednesday). It also means that we cannot afford to run the washing machine, which leads to the biggest problem.....
Knickers!!
We are running out of clean undies! So on Saturday morning M packed up all the dirty laundry and went home on the train for the night. She spent the afternoon doing washes and pegging it all out on the line to dry. This time there was no fox sitting in the sunshine, in fact there was little or no sunshine. There were, however, mountains of wet leaves and M spent a couple of hours sweeping them up. This made the garden look a lot neater and (M insists) worked off some of the lovely calories consumed in Pierreponts yesterday.
Back at the boat, R had a relaxing day working on the computer.

On Sunday morning, M left Reigate to take the train back to MM via Reading. As the trains are only hourly on Sunday, this meant she had an hour to wait in Reading for the train to Goring. So R travelled from Goring to meet her in Reading station, where they had a romantic "Brief Encounter", not under the station clock, but in Costa Coffee!  They also did some shopping in the little M&S food store in the station before returning to MM.

Whilst Goring is lovely, we are beginning to get cabin fever and are looking forward to being able to get going again. The lock-keeper confirmed today that the river is dropping slowly. At its peak it was 18 inches above normal and it is now still about 10 inches up. He still reckons that the "Red Boards" are unlikely to go before Tuesday.
Another 6.7 hours to charge the batteries.