After unloading the car and a short breather we went back into Ramsay for a good stock up at Tesco. We decided to take as little as possible in the car (apart from the usual meat order from Duttons!) so we needed a particularly large re-stock.
At the outset of the last trip we arrived back at the boat to find that something had tripped the shore line. Unfortunately we had experimented this time with leaving the freezer on - we had been assured that this was OK, but, of course, had not taken into account the possibility of a power interruption. As result the batteries were fully exhausted but when we charged them with the shore line back on we seemed to be OK and the charging pattern looked at first as it had been previously. However, lover the net week there was a gradual degradation in performance and by the end of the trip we were having to be very cautious with our battery management.
After consultation with the supplier we reached the conclusion that we would have to but the bullet and replace all four batteries - even without checking that all four were not functional it is not a good idea to replace only some of them at any time. We had to find a supplier and decided to use Tayna - we had heard good reports of them and they offer good prices. To make things easier we went for a like-for-like replacement. They were delivered to home, arriving on a full size pallet!
We also followed up a recommendation of an engineer familiar with Mastervolt equipment and is based near to Bill Fen Marina. We mananaged to book the engineer to visit us first thing this morning. In the event he was slightly delayed but was on the case by 11 am.
After removing the old batteries - he found some anomalies which we will have to follow up later but after installing the new batteries he checked out the settings of the Mastervolt system.
We had already planned to take the car over to Buckden Marina as we are now booked in there for a six day whilst Mike goes up to York for General Synod. Christine will stay on board but having the car will give her other options.
We drove over and settled the account for the electrical work. Our expectation was that we would have to walk just over a mile into the village to catch a bus into Huntingdon. As it happened the person in the marina office was just about to leave by car and offered us a life. We found the bus stop with about five minutes to go before the next bus.
At Huntingdon the onward service is hourly but some go to Ramsay and others to Chatteris. It happened that the one that was about to depart (actually the same bus that we had arrived on!) was the wrong destination so we had time to look around the town centre.
Although the former county of Huntingdonshire has long disappeared, the older buildings in the town centre indicate that it was once a place of both wealth and importance.
We would have visited the church but it was closed. Rather a missed opportunity it seemed as the main square was being used for a food and drink festival.
The second bus journey was a little tedious as it took almost an hour, winding its way around the outer parts of Hungtingdon - it was about half an hour before we left the town - and then made various diversions into villages along the way. However it was a few minutes early at Ramsay. We then had a good half hour walk back to the marina - at least almost all walks in this part of the country are on the level.
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