Karen’s Travel Blog

I was going to title my next blog entry ‘From Oxford to the Sea’, but…..I will start this saga from the beginning. We made it up to Oxford and moored below Follys Bridge for two nights. Then we turned around and meandered down the river, stopping for two nights at Wallingford, then Henley and Marlow and onto Windsor.

On leaving Marlow the generator failed, but luckily we were able to contact the company, who agreed to meet us in Windsor to correct the problem. But that was not the end of the generator story. Then we discovered a leak in the engine coolant and that combined with our Wi-Fi on board not connecting was leaving our crossing in doubt. Black Thursday turned into lucky Friday. The generator was fixed (the man drove all the way from Portsmouth, a 4 hour journey). The coolant leak was fixed and pressure tested and much to my delight our Wi-Fi problem was sorted.

BUT, and yes this is a very big but. When fixing the generator we were informed it was not the 7kva generator that had been specked, but 5kva. Pipers had told us we needed the bigger generator as we had put in an additional air conditioner in the saloon. Disaster, would the 5 but enough to run the larger air conditioner. We were able to contact Simon Piper who assured us the smaller generator would cope, and offered not only to refund the difference but give a monetary compensation. But the question was, why during the build were we told we needed the bigger generator. The outcome is we have decided to stay in the UK to sort this issue out. France will have to wait until next year. And honestly the Thames is not too shabby to linger on.