A brilliant weekend

23rd to 27th November

What a good weekend that was, and I can remember almost all of it! (Must be getting old.)

On Friday, we got up early, breakfasted in the dark and set off to catch our train at Middlewood station. I felt very uncertain about this – the station just seems so improbable, a little two platform halt without even road access – you have to walk along the Middlewood Way to reach it – but at 9.59 almost exactly, a two coach DMU chugged up and we got on. When the conductor came round, he could not only sell us tickets to Newark from his little machine, he gave us a better price than the website had suggested, and took my credit card using chip and pin. It really felt like something out of 70’s sci-fi.

The journey then ran exactly to time, with no delays – who says trains haven’t improved? The run across the Peak District in the TransPennine Express is through excellent scenery, and the only downside was Doncaster station. A bitter wind was blowing, and Doncaster has always been a chilly station at the best of times.

We had packed sarnies to eat whilst waiting for the connection there, and we sat on the platform, guzzling them down as quickly as possible so as to be able to put our gloves back on. We’d chosen the route to Newark at Graeme’s suggestion – whilst waiting, the train we would have caught at Sheffield to go to Lincoln came through; it makes a bizarre trip from Doncaster back to Sheffield and then on to Lincoln for some reason, and it was an amazingly elderly looking two coach beast, packed to the doors.

Graeme met us at Newark after a very different sort of ride in one of GNER’s sleek beasts, and we were soon at Boothby Graffoe. It’s an amazing village with stupendous views off the Lincoln Cliff, an escarpment that runs across the Fens to Lincoln.

We had a great evening with Graeme and Cathy, and renewed our acquaintance with Daniel, who is nearly six months old now, and well grown already.

On Saturday we made a trip to a Majestic Wine Warehouse to let Graeme stock up for Christmas, and to buy some wine and beer for the weekend. I was pleased to find they stocked the Lebanese wine Chateau Musar, which is grown in the Bekaa Valley – it’s the only vineyard in the world where hoeing between the vines is made more dangerous by the unexploded cluster bombs. I’d read that it was a special tasting wine, and was keen to try it, so bought a couple of bottles for that purpose, and as an extra birthday pressie for Graeme.

We then had a relaxed day at home, reading papers and entertaining Daniel. It’s great being a grandparent – you get all the fun of playing with the sprog, then when things get fractious you can just hand them back to your immediate offspring to deal with. (Don’t want to take over, after all.)

Sunday we had a family outing to Gibraltar Point, the bit of land that sticks out South of Skegness and forms the northern tip of the Wash. It’s a really well done Nature Reserve, with large areas of sanctuary for birds coming to the Wash from all over the world, but with just enough facilities to provide for essential needs.

I was sceptical that the cafe and so on would be open at this time of year, but it was, and served us a very good lunch, as well as providing a high chair for Daniel, and all in a viewing gallery equipped with decent binoculars so you could have a good scan of the saltings before and after eating.

We were certainly grateful for the shelter – Skeggy is bracing at the best of times, and a bitter nor’ westerly was blasting across the scenery.

After lunch it was a little gentler, and we had another walk before heading back to Boothby Graffoe for tea. Afterwards, Graeme booted up his computer and lent us a memory stick (I’d brought one with me, but had forgotten that it was Mac formatted, and his Windows machine couldn’t see it.) We transferred some photos onto it – mainly Daniel, but one or two others as well. When I get a chance, I’ll put a photo gallery of Daniel up on the main website and link to it here for the family readers.

We had a bottle of the Chateau Musar that night – it is indeed a very nice wine, or at least the 1999 vintage is, well worth the money if you get the chance to buy it.

Monday morning Graeme had to go back to work, poor chap, so Cathy ran us to the station. The trip back was just as efficient as the trip out, but with less of the freezing wind. We bought some sandwiches in Doncaster Station cafe – pricey, but very nice. We got back to Middlewood pretty well bang on time, and were back at the boat by half two.

We found Ian Grindrod busy sorting the alternators on the engine, so moved onto the boat, relit the Squirrel, and then I helped him while Sheila sorted the domestic stuff.

The power had been on all weekend from the shoreline, but the freezer had defrosted just a tad. Our fridge freezer is a single sensor type, where the thermostat is in the fridge, so if the external temperature drops too far, the compressor never starts up (because the fridge isn’t getting warm) and so the freezer bit isn’t kept as cold as it should be.

Had I thought, there’s a button in ours to use in this situation, but like an idiot I’d forgotten about it until we got back. Nothing was actually defrosted, but I’ll use up the stuff that was in the top drawer as soon as possible, I think.

Today, Ian finished off the jobs on the boat, wiring in a DC socket in the engine 'ole for the new pump out pump.

After lunch we pulled out of the yard to let the latest shell come in – nice though it is being in the yard, it was good to be out and about again. We came up the canal through High Lane to Deer Farm Bend for the night, and spent some time finishing off putting the boat back into cruise mode and cutting up some wood.

Tomorrow we have to decide how to use the rest of the time up to Christmas, but there’s no rush – we want to be here or hereabouts for a while yet.