Such a fun start to a day! Woke up to find that the toilet was blocked.. Macerator is running, but nothing is going away. We have this sometimes when there is an air lock, but usually a little persuasion (and patience) allows the water to get to the blades of the macerator and the air out through the bowl, and a simple press of the flush button usually clears it. But no.. not this time..
Prodding and poking it didn’t work so whatever is blocking the pipe causing the air not to get back out must be really jammed in there. We were considering all things – including a full strip down again similar to when we had hair jammed around the blades 8 months ago.. but that time, we had an empty toilet tank.. this time we would need a pump out first, or stripping down the toilet would allow everything to wash back into the boat flooding the shower room (water levels an all that!)..
Before we set off back the way we came to get a pump-out – we tried one last thing.. take out the panels from behind the toilet and see if we could “massage” the rubber pipes and get some movement – whilst its all still connected. Thankfully – this did the job and several flushes later we could continue and not have to turn around again.
- It later transpired that kitchen roll had been put down there.. which is what caused the blockage.. as unlike toilet paper, kitchen roll does not dissolve as soon as it gets wet.. Naming no names.. no more kitchen roll will be going down there again! 🙂
When we eventually got going, half the day was lost – but I’m happy with that as the toilet is working.
There are a lot of these old WW2 pill boxes still around on this canal.. some mainly for anti-infantry with small machine-gun sized slots
..and some have been made large enough for an anti-tank gun.. especially considering this one had a very good un-obstructed view of the bridge and the field opposite – on the southern side of the canal..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_hardened_field_defences_of_World_War_II
And – talking of birds on the canal.. here’s a very rare sighting…. finally out of the boat and not cleaning up after everyone!
We got through to Kintbury, stopped for water and decided to stop for the night. The mooring in Kintbury was full, but there was a bit of open space past the bridge, so we got as close as we could and stopped for the night near to St. Mary’s Church and the grounds around it. The sound of peacocks in the distance sending us to sleep tonight!
We saw Doug again, the Canadian who was over for 6 months and decided to buy a boat and travel the canals for his summer break.. looks like if we get the timing right, we could be doing the Caen Hill Flight together.. but that’s still several days away yet!