Pottering about at Poynton

7th & 8th November

The inverter/charger having behaved itself all night, in the morning I agreed with Ian Grindrod that I would take the TravelPower alternator off the engine whilst Maria arranged for its repair. In the end she used a firm recommended by Beta Marine called Cox Automotive, who will diagnose the faults and then quote for the repair. They wanted all of the kit, that is the alternator, control box and, if possible, the wiring loom.

Further consultation with Ian indicated that extracting the loom (a single armoured cable) shouldn’t be too difficult, and Sheila and I between us managed it. It involved a certain amount of hauling of drawers out from the wardrobe (which backs onto the engine room) and clearing out the cupboard under the washing machine (which badly needed doing anyway).

I then took it all round to the Braidbar workshop, and we packed it all up for despatch to Cox’s. Back at the boat I cleared up in the engine room, and cleaned up the various tools I’d used, and suddenly it was lunchtime.

After lunch we put stuff back in the wardrobe, and chucked out a bit of the stuff that had been lurking under the washing machine. We decided to stay on the shop mooring on shore line power for another night, so Sheila could do a second wash load, and even tumble dry some of it.

On the web, I looked up trains to Lincoln for three weeks’ time (we’re going to visit Graeme, Cathy and Daniel, hopefully), and Sheila ordered some new bedding, taking advantage of having an address to which to have it delivered.

Today we staggered out of bed at our usual time, and pulled back onto the water point to refill the tank after yesterday’s washing fest. Then we moved on to Ian’s mooring, since his boat is currently stuck in the yard with an alternator problem, and the weather forecast was not such as to encourage boating.

Sure enough it came on to rain and blow quite hard, so we were glad to snuggle down in a warm boat. Sheila had been investigating buying a memory foam mattress topper, and, finally giving up the attempt to make the relevant website accept our bed size, rang them up and placed the order that way. It looks like Braidbar are going to be bombarded with parcels for us in the next few days.

The weather had improved a bit in the afternoon, but not enough to tempt Sheila out. I left watching her Pride and Prejudice DVD,and knitting away, and went to explore the routes to Middlewood Station, which looks to be the best for our Lincoln trip.

There’s a good walking route called the Middlewood Way from Macclesfield to Marple, more or less paralleling the canal, and the station is just by it at Middlewood, would you believe. Unfortunately, they were doing some forestry on part of the bit I wanted to use, so the walk turned out a bit longer and more complicated than I had planned, but hey, that’s the joy of exploring.

I finally got back to the boat after about 90 minutes – it should only be around twenty one way if we’re able to use the direct route (and know where we're going). The station itself is really a halt – just two platforms and shelters. I suspect you have to hold your hand out to stop the train.

Sheila was still in Austen land, so I watched another episode of Blakes 7 before putting the dinner on – stew tonight, with celeriac and potato mash.