Peaceful mooring at Bodymoor Heath

21st & 22nd November

This mooring at the foot of Curdworth flight is really extremely peaceful. We have had a couple of very quiet nights, despite the fact that the M42 runs across the Water Park.

We'd not run the engine very much the day before, so the batteries were looking a bit low voltage yesterday morning. I stayed on the boat whilst we gave them an hour's boost, and Sheila went off to do some more birding. After she'd been gone an hour I stopped the engine and closed the boat up to go and make sure she was OK – I met her on her way back to the boat.

We then went off and found the one geocache inside the Water Park, Kings Berry, ho, ho. It wasn't a difficult find, which made a change after the microcaches of the day before.

We got back to Sanity just in nice time for lunch, and then both did the rounds of the hides. Sheila is fairly clocking up the sightings this time, including a Little Grebe and several Goldeneye duck.

The rest of the afternoon was spent on the boat, as the weather became windier and cooler. We ran the engine again, and did a washload whilst we were about it. I took the chance to do some web browsing, although the connection here is a bit slow and erratic.

I managed to check out the OpenStreetMap project, which sounds really interesting if I can get my head round the technical stuff – certainly worth seeing if I can contribute, but we need to be in a more stable connection area; it's too frustrating waiting for pages to load at GPRS speeds when you are browsing round a new set of linked sites.

Sheila's been slogging on with the crochet – it's a bit tedious doing four long strips on the trot, but at least the pattern is simple enough that she can watch a DVD at the same time.

After another quiet night, we woke to a bright and cold morning today. Taking advantage of the lull in the wind, we sorted out the new coal bags, unwrapping the tarpaulin from the remaining two, and generally turning the whole thing round so that ten bags can be stacked neatly and wrapped up in the tarp.

Then I winded the boat; the winding hole is just before the moorings, so it was a case of reversing, winding then reversing again onto the mooring. It didn't go brilliantly, I have to say. The wind didn't get up much, which was a blessing, but the channel is quite narrow and the winding hole both narrow and shallow, so Sanity wasn't really in a mood to co-operate. The shaft had to be skilfully wielded by Sheila at one point, and in the end I gave up trying to be neat and just stuck her bow against the end of the hole and motored her round.

We've tied a little nearer the lock than we were, having seen how much space you need to turn here.

Having done all this, we went for a walk in the park to get up an appetite for lunch. After, Sheila nipped off to do some more twitching, and I stayed on the boat, loafing around the Web, running the engine and generally relaxing.

It's now seriously cold outside, with a brisk nor' wester blowing, so we are grateful to have got the roof sorted and tidy, and to have a good stock of fuel on board.

Tomorrow we'll potter back to Hopwas, stopping to shop as we go through Fazeley, then Monday should see us back at Alrewas in time for the Village Walk on Tuesday.