Two quietly pleasant days

24th & 25th October

Yesterday was a relaxed start for once. The main task in prospect was to refill the water tank, which would also involve winding the boat, as the next direction we want to go in is towards Stone.

It was Sheila's turn to steer, so I went ahead and opened Bagnall Lock for her, worked her through and then set off to walk to meet her at the water point above Alrewas Lock. On the way, I came across Michael Lee on Thistle.

He'd moored to take on a load of fuel; if you tie in Alrewas near the bowling green, you can get near enough the road to let a road tanker's delivery hose reach you. Michael has a very big fuel tank, and buys his fuel in such large amounts that he can get it delivered in this way.

He told me that he's gone over to using kerosene rather than gas oil. He's had to have the regulator for his diesel stove changed, but reckons he's saving £50 per delivery. The downside is that he can't now refuel at a canalside supplier, of course. Not a route I'd choose to go, but then Sanity's tank isn't big enough to take a road delivery anyway.

We arrived at the water point and started the washing machine and to fill the water tank. It's a decent pressure here at Alrewas, so we'd topped up before the wash load had finished the heat part of the cycle. I persuaded the machine to stop heating and worked Sheila down through the lock onto the river.

It was a very pleasant run along the river section and onto Wychnor Lock, below which is the winding hole. I worked her down the lock and then waited by it for Sheila to come back. This took a bit longer than usual, but I'm not going into details, it can happen to anyone.

Anyway, last time I was rude about Sheila's boating skills on this blog, she decided to get her revenge by making me do the mooring bit ever since, and I'm not risking spending the next twenty years having to wind Sanity every time she needs it.

Back at Alrewas, there was room on the moorings between the lock and water point, so we nipped in there. We had planned to go on to Fradley today, but decided that we may as well sit tight here until Monday. We want to diesel at King's Bromley next week, and as they are not open on Mondays, there's no point heading that way too soon.

The afternoon was spent quietly; I made up some tying down lines by cutting three lengths of Victory Black and putting an eye splice in one end and a back splice in the other of each.

Then we unloaded the coal bags from their cocoon of tarpaulin on the roof, laid out the lines and put the folded tarp on top, replaced the coal, folded over the tarp and tied it all up with the new lines, It now looks much tidier than it did before, and hopefully will resist the wind better.

Elanor dropped in at the end of the day and shared a lasagne with us.

Today we had another lazy start. Last night we'd agreed to go over to Elanor's to help her put up some replacement fence panels, but she had to take her car into the Honda dealer in Derby for some warranty work first, and didn't expect to be with us before twelve.

I wandered into the village to do various errands, and came back to help change the bed and have a coffee. We'd barely finished the bed when Elanor rang to say that she'd finished at the garage already, and could come and get us straight away.

She was with us before we'd finished drinking the coffee, so off we went to shop at Morrisons, eat lunch at her place and then wrestle with the panels. The job went surprisingly well. The panels were being dropped in between concrete posts, and only one had to trimmed to fit, so not bad at all. The garden looks much better for having a row of neat and intact panels down one side, rather than gaps and rickety decaying things.

Mid afternoon we came back to Sanity, to discover Waimaru tied near us. They've been stuck on the wrong side of the closure at Stenson, where a bridge fell into the canal when a farmer's contractor hit it with a huge and well loaded muck spreader (or in BBC speak "a trailer full of fertilizer").

John had emailed to say that they were on their way, but it was really good to see that they'd made it. They're giving us dinner tonight, so I don't even have to cook; what a nice weekend it's being so far.