Sunday 6th January 2019
So it turns out that the shower pump was hidden behind the wall, rather than behind the convenient inspection hatch under the shower. Hmmm.
I spent most of Saturday trying to remove the wall panel. There are only six screws, but they felt like they had been concreted in. With a lot of perseverance, patience, and swearing a lot, I managed to get them out.
I thought I might just try the switch to see if I could hear anything. The pump sprang into life. ??? Mind you it wasn’t actually pumping out the shower tray. I reasoned that the pump needed priming, having been sat for nearly four months without use, and it was clear that there was no water in the pipe leading up to the pump. I pondered removing the pipe and filling it with water, but then decided that it would be so much simpler to just fill the shower tray. Gravity would push water down the waste tube, and at least some way up the pipe you can see coming from the left in the picture. To my amazement, it actually worked, and the pump proceeded to empty the shower! I have decided that the pump simply wanted some company, and decided to sulk until it got some.
By now it was getting too dark to see clearly, so I went home.
We returned to the boat this morning, and as the weather was actually quite pleasant – 10 degrees Celsius and little wind, we decided to potter up to Teapot Turn for some lunch. Anne managed to get her fix of duck and goose feeding, but we didn’t see any moorhens today. We did see a beautiful kingfisher that teased us for quite a long stretch of the canal by flying ahead and then perching on an overhanging branch, then waiting till I was just about to click the shutter on the camera before flying ahead again.
While Anne prepared the lunch at Teapot Turn, I rebuilt the bathroom walls. It didn’t take long, I replaced all the screws with new ones and even though Anne checked to see if they had come through to the outside of the boat, I had actually checked that they were the same length as the ones I took out.
We only had about an hour tied up, before heading back to the marina, it is still getting dark very early, and we wanted to be back on the pontoon while we could still see.
Miles: 4
Locks: 2 (Hoo Mill twice)
Hours: 2
City Of Durham 