We managed to get Friday's and Saturday's issues out of step, but I'm sure you figured that out.

Last night, Lynette wandered down to the canal and took a few evening photos. She thought the Watermill was a mill on the water, and was disappointed to find that it was a community centre.

We had breakfast and then I raced off to the Newbury ham radio rally, which is what we would call a junk sale in NZ. This was the 27^th annual event. Compared to NZ, and Hamilton in particular, it was quite something.

There were about 100 stalls, which ranged in size from the bonnet of a car to something about 10 metres long and professionally laid out. In addition there were a number of organisations that were there to display what they were doing. Some of these displays included the RAF signals, the Maritime Officers Association, a group that supports a refurbished Vulcan bomber and a refurbished Police van.

There was the normal range of stuff there, and I wandered around just looking. A lot more ex military items there than we get at home. Being conscious of the weight for shipping, I didn't pick much up. The heavy items that I bought were some English radio magazines, from which I extracted the articles of interest and binned the rest. It's wasteful In know, but 24 mags from a couple of years ago, cost less than a new one today. Besides, I know how hard it is to get rid of old magazines, you literally can't give them away.

Lynette was back in the pub writing up her diary, which I am sure is far more comprehensive than this blog. I came back and picked her up at noon and we went down the road to Hungerford, where the canal boats operate from. We had hoped to get the horse drawn one, but that didn't work out. Before the boat ride, we wandered around the shops of Hungerford.

We found an antiques arcade, where there were at least 30 sections, by different sellers, and everything was locked up. If you wanted to buy something, you had to see the cashier on the door and they will open the case and you pay the price on the paper. No haggling. There were a few commemorative pieces of china, but nothing that was that exciting. I saw a number of bits of militaria, which is unusual to find in an arcade like this, but they were quite expensive. An original Sharps capping breechloader carbine was NZ6000, for something that was only a wall hanger. NZ$1400 for a very battered percussion pistol of unknown name, without a hammer, seemed a lot to me.

We had a bit of cake and a drink at the cafe on the top floor of the arcade. It really was the attic. There were yellow and black safety markers in all directions as you had to step over and dodge all sorts of obstacles. The entry height can have been little over four feet high as even Lynette had to duck to get under the beam.

We joined the canal boat ride with about 40 others, including far too many uncontrolled, screaming kids. The trip is run by a trust that looks after the canal, and they certainly could have done things a lot better. They gave a small health and safety briefing, (if anything goes wrong, we will ram the boat into the bank and you can climb off, as we don't have life jackets etc.) Then they shut up. Unfortunately the canal goes mainly along a farm so it is as boring as watching a game of cricket, which is even worse than watching paint dry. They really missed an opportunity to educate people on the canals and extract a few more pounds out of them to maintain the canals.

The GPS really threw a fit tonight. We were heading back to the pub, and I had programmed in the pub address, but it was slow to sync up to the satellite, so I switched it off. That's the traditional way of solving a problem. When it started up again, we were directed around and then I noticed a problem when it told us to continue for 21 miles. That was more than we had done all day. We reprogrammed the pub address and found our way back, after a 10 mile detour. Isn't technology wonderful!!

BTW, we didn't hear much about English sports today. Apparently they lost the rugby and soccer matches that they were watching.

The canal boat is not on fire, but could use a bit of dry firewood.

The Hare and Hounds pub at night.

Above and Below:  A couple of photos of the open air junk sale.

The green boxes are WS31 sets, which were ancient when I worked on them as an apprentice.

The restored Police comms wagon and pursuit car.

There was something for everyone.  You don't see this in NZ.

A pub on every corner, or so it seems.

The Rafters cafe in the antique arcasde

Above and Below:  Canal boats

we didn't go through this lock, but you can see how deep it is.

These ducks were extremely well fed.