Unexpected item on the towpath

The unexpected item being a giraffe lurking in the undergrowth alongside a towpath. It was in the garden of a houseboat that we came across  as my daughter, Jen, and I were passing time strolling along the Basingstoke Canal from St John's whilst the front tyres were changed on her car. We had a pleasant chat with the owner who has lived on the boat for ten years with his partner, cat, two dogs and, now, a happily talkative  toddler daughter who was encouraging us to sample the mud pie. she had just made.

This was shortly after we had had another interesting chat with the lock keeper who had just tied up his boat for the night and whose back is towards us in the extra. I had not realised that the one lock keeper was responsible for all 29 locks on the 32 mile long canal. He has to be present every time a boat goes through one of the locks. He has a van, but that is still a lot of ground/waterway to cover every day.

Many thanks to all those who kindly congratulated me yesterday on my 1000th blip. So this is my 1001st blip and not as dull an entry, I hope, as I had first feared it would be on what had been otherwise a pretty uneventful day. My resolve is that the next 1,000 blips will take the regulation 1,000 days. .A stray giraffe, an idyllic scene and interesting and informative encounters with erstwhile strangers struck me as suitably blip-worthy.