Out of the yard for a bit

12th & 13th September

Yesterday got off to an odd start; a good night's sleep was ended by a seriously weird nightmare. I dreamt I was driving along what appeared to be a motorway along the North Wales coast, when I came to a bit where the locals had decided to improve the road surface for themselves. They were all over all three lanes, just in ordinary clothes, no hi-vis or anything, and using various garden tools to work on it.

They were directing the traffic to pull over whilst they did it, and I woke trying to get my mobile out of my pocket to call the police. It was 5.45, and further sleep was impossible, I was so angry with these vigilante road menders.

Like I say, weird.

It was a day for hanging about, rather, waiting to see if our Eberspacher was back from the service agent: it turned out that it was on its way, but had not yet reached the Manchester depot from which it could be collected. I filled in time by washing the bike, going to buy a newspaper and editing the Cruising Plans panel on this blog.

Just as we were finishing lunch, Peter appeared with the Eberspacher, his wife Sue having called in at the Manchester depot to get it. It was soon refitted and started up, and I was able to reassemble the back end of the boat. At Sheila's suggestion, we took time to do a thorough clean of the area before putting all the stuff back.

Late in the afternoon we pulled out of the yard. We still don't have the cratch reassembled; it's mostly done, but needs the repaired areas touching in before it can go back on. It's quite odd boating along without the cratch, but not unpleasant at the moment as the weather seems to have taken a turn for the better.

Sheila steered up to High Lane to wind, and we came back and moored outside Skye on the Braidbar mooring on the mainline. On the way, I discovered that the final decision on the change of regulation about duty on red diesel has been published. It's going to be interesting to see how it works out. Waterways World has described it as "Pay as much tax as you like" since we will have to declare each time we buy diesel how much is for propulsion and how much for domestic purposes.

Peter came round for dinner, and we had a merry evening over curry and red wine.

This morning we had a relaxed start before going shopping and then coming back to the boat to prepare it for the arrival of Sheila's nephew Alastair, his wife Alison, their two kids Abigail and Josh, and her sister Helen.

They arrived nice and promptly at two, and we took them for a trip down the canal. We'd planned to wind by Lyme View Marina at Adlington, but it was such a fine day, I went on to the further winding hole at Bridge 20.

This one proved to be very muddy, but we got round at last and set off back. It made a total of around 90 minutes boating, which seemed to be just right for the kids, who are aged five and three (I think).

Back outside Skye, the adults had a cup of tea, and a lot of duck feeding took place. There was just time for the youngsters to have a quick go on the Bryceland trampoline at the boat yard before they had to leave.

We've settled down for a quiet evening after all the excitement of the past few days. Tomorrow we'll head off towards Marple, coming back to High Lane in time to tow the next shell from North Cheshire Cruising Club to Braidbar on Tuesday afternoon.