Leaving Cookham on a busy sunny Sunday, we managed to time the lunch stop so that we could naughtily moor up in the lock layby at Boulter’s Lock near Maidenhead without incurring the wrath of the lock keeper, because he was at lunch too.

There’s a convenient free (to local residents) car park at the lock, and Biggles’ best friends Vicki and Moore drove out, dropped a car there and joined him on a cruise around Maidenhead and down via Bray and the race-course to Windsor, where cat friendly moorings at Baths Island were a mere 5 minutes walk from the town centre and our friends’ home.

It’s quite strange cruising through areas that one regularly frequents on land. And the First Mate can feel another stiff letter to RBWM coming on… if our residents’ Advantage  Card can give us discounts at local car parks and restaurants, why can’t it give us a discount on mooring Song & Dance for a few days?

There’s a mooring here somewhere… chief cook multi-tasks by steering and reading the guide book map.

A very pleasant spot, on sunny weekends Baths Island is wall-to-wall with picnicking Sikhs from Slough (it used to be wall-to-wall BBQs, but the council put a stop to that). Weekdays it’s a quiet but very convenient little back-water. Only five minutes walk to catch a bus back home, too, to sort out some stuff.

Meantime Biggles is delighted with his new scratching post.