Two pubs in 48 hours

10th & 11th September

At the end of my last post we were waiting for Peter to finish the first part of installing the new drive plate, whilst planning to have a night off from cooking by popping down to the local pub, the Boar's Head, for a meal.

In the event, Peter got carried away with what he was doing, and we left him to it, with a key to lock up the boat when he'd finished. When we got back at around nine, he'd done so and gone; somehow he'd managed to remount the gearbox by himself, which is quite a feat.

Clearly, he's not a wrgie; wrg's health and safety rules strictly proscribe solo working.

Yesterday was one of those relaxed days where we caught up with lots of bits and pieces. The high spot was noticing that the Sitemeter hit counter was showing 19,991 hits first thing, and by lunch time the 20,000 milestone had been reached. As I've said before, I can't tell the identity of individual visitors, but I am able to say that number 20,000 was from Harlow, Essex, and apparently wanted to look at some of the photos illustrating the 2006 cruise.

More mundanely, I slogged down to Poynton in the morning to get some general supplies. The best choice is not at the Co-op near the main junction in the centre of town, but at a Somerfield a little distance down the main road. This makes it hard work getting down there, and even harder getting back up the hill; it's a characteristic of the Macc that all the shops are well below the level of the canal.

In the afternoon we washed and polished the starboard side of the boat, it being a very pleasant day. While we were doing this, Maria came and took some photos of our portholes to illustrate what GU style ones look like to one of the customers.

Having a functioning engine again meant that we could run it for a bit to get enough hot water in the calorifier to be able to have showers, which were very welcome.

At the end of the day, Peter called in for a cuppa and to chat about this and that, especially the arrangements for the Open Day and Owners' Weekend. It looks like we'll be having the quiz on the Saturday night, as that's when most folks will be around.

This morning, knowing that there wouldn't be anything to do to Sanity as the Eberspacher won't be back until tomorrow, we had a lazy start, then both walked down into Poynton again. Sheila's brother Peter and sister-in-law Jan were coming over to go out for a pub lunch with us, and we wanted to get things like biscuits to offer them with a cup of tea in the afternoon.

They duly turned up at 12, and we went off to the Miner's Arms at Adlington for a leisurely meal. The food was very good, as ever, but for once the service was a bit slower than was welcome. It didn't stop us finishing with their new dessert, the Curly Wurly Mega Thingy Sundae. This was recommended for sharing, and boy were they right.

It came in a large glass chalice with four spoons, and comprised a lot of everything you'd expect in a Sundae, plus chocolate fudge cake and profiteroles at the bottom. We just about managed to finish it between us.

Back at Poynton, we made an effort to walk off both it and the Spitfire draught by going down the towpath for some distance and then returning via the Middlewood Way.

Then we settled in the boat to drink tea and eat biscuits until it was time for our guests to leave.

Since then we've been gently pottering, as you may imagine. Tomorrow we may well see the Eberspacher back, and then we'll pull out of the yard for the weekend, so as to give our next set of guests a little boat trip on Saturday.