Monday, June 08, 2009

Herbie's portraitist pays a visit

If you like solitude, the Great Ouse could be for you. I think we passed only one boat moving today as we moved from Godmanchester to Eaton Socon, just south of St Neots. No dog walkers or joggers along the river banks, just trees, reeds and meadows interspersed with locks at the sites of old mills. The mill pools are very pretty but the locks are v-e-r-y s--l--o--w to operate. It took 40 minutes to get through St Neots lock.


At lunchtime we we joined for a cuppa by Rick's sister Julie who a couple of years ago created for us a much loved water colour painting of Herbie which now hangs on our wall at home.
We were passing not far from her home so she came out to see the boat she had painted but never seen! Her painting was done from a photo.


Here we are now, moored on a shaky pontoon sticking out into the weirpool at Eaton Socon. I hope we don't get washed away in the night if the EA decides to open up more sluices.




Kath discoverd how wobbly the pontoon was when she was despatched ashore to catch the mooring rope. She ended up crawling along the pontoon on her hands and knees. I tried not to laugh but it was a joy to behold.

2 comments:

Colin said...

Hi guys.
This seems a suitable thread to leave you a message.
I have captured an image of Herbie whilst moored on the Buckby Flight a few weeks back.
You'll find a complementary file of the image for you here:
http://www.narrowboatimages.co.uk/herbie2.jpg
It has a file size of around 1.5mb so you'll need a decent connection to download it.
Hope you like it.
I've touched up some of Herbie's paintwork too :-)
I'll leave the file on server for a week or so for you to download.

Vallypee said...

Poor Kath! She must have been hanging on to her dignity as well as the pontoon ;-)

The water colour is gorgeous, although I have a feeling I've seen in it on one of your much older posts. Not sure. Anyway, it's beautifully done, and so nice that the artist could meet her subject at last. Hope the weather improves and you don't get swept along too fast.