One wet day, one sunny day

3rd & 4th June

After I'd posted last time, I discovered by chance the links option that lets you see when other blogs have linked to your own. This made me aware of the kind things being said by Greygal in her Dogsontour blog – thanks Greygal. I've now set up an email alert that tells me when such things happen , so that I can get the ego boost as soon as possible.

Yesterday we woke to a very wet morning, and took our time getting ready to go. By nine o'clock we were on our way, with Sheila all togged up in wet weather gear on the back, and yours truly finding stuff to do in the cabin, like checking emails.

Arriving at Atherstone locks, I didn't bother to put waterproof trousers on – the rain was quite warm, so wearing shorts was the answer, skin drying faster than cloth. There were a lot of other boats on the move, probably because everyone had chosen to try to wait out the worst of the rain.

It took quite a while to get down the five locks to our preferred shopping mooring as a result – lots of the boats were being steered by novices, or folks who don't get much chance do a lot of boating, so patience was the name of the game. It makes it more interesting in its way, though as always, it really really helps not to be in a hurry.

I nipped into town to get basic stores and a prescription filled, then we had lunch accompanied by mugs of soup. (June, and we're still drinking soup for lunch). After that we went down another four locks to moor between locks nine and ten. When we got there we were on our own, but by dinner time, several other boats had turned up.

There are visitor moorings at the very bottom of the flight, but this stretch of Armco by the disused footbridge is nicer in that it's less shaded, and you're not opposite the long term moorers on the offside, many of whom have little air cooled gennies they like to run in the evening.

(You know: NEEEerrrrrrr...eeerrr......EEEEERrrrr...eeeerrrrr, on and on and on and on....)

It was cold enough and soggy enough that we lit the stove and dropped the cratch cover. Typically, this meant we were sitting around in t-shirts and shorts with the side hatches open and the fire burning, but it does both dry out and cheer up the boat so much.

I finished making a second fender, so we now have a set to use while I recover the big fat fenders. After dinner we were sitting around trying to find the motivation to do the washing up when there came a knocking on the roof, and a cheerful face appeared in the side hatches. This proved to be Bob off Amber Moon.

Known as Plumb Bob because of his role at the IWA National Festival (it involves a lot of water pipes), he and his wife are good examples of the kind of vital support the IWA relies on to deliver that Festival. Ann does the personnel stuff so they are both 'blue shirts' in the jargon.

Naturally we invited them in for a drink, and a merry evening was had with aid of a couple of bottles of wine. I used to worry that our chosen lifestyle would seriously reduce our circle of friendship (there's some research that shows that health in later life is greatly affected by how many friends and relations you are in contact with) but this sort of incident shows I didn't need to.

If anything, we engage in social activity with a lot more people, albeit often in an unpredictable way like last night, than we did when we were stuck in one place all the time.

Today the weather couldn't have been more different. It was a gloriously sunny morning, so we made a cracking early start, setting off down the last two locks in the flight at 7.30. Then I steered us along what must be the best bit of the original Coventry Canal, through to the start of Amington. We were held up for a time by a couple of Rose Narrowboats ambling, or indeed tacking, along, but in due course they let us by, and we were soon enough at the top of the Glascote two.

We got straight down, and tied on the service point at Peel's Wharf to fill the water tank and dump some recycling. No bins for cardboard or clothes there, though, so that had to wait until we were tied by Sutton Road Bridge, access point for the retail parks.

After lunch we got rid of the rest of the recycling, browsed a few shops and then raided Sainsbury's.

We're presently looking to replace our folding chairs, and Sheila had found some likely ones on the Argos website, but when we went into the Argos store here we couldn't find them in the catalogue. Back at the boat, I checked the website again, and was able to reserve them for collection from the store, so that's a job for the morning before we go.