Loafing and ambling towards Penkridge

31st July & 1st August

Yesterday was a day to catch up with ourselves after the excitements of the week. We stayed where we were on Tixall Wide, making a leisurely start to the day after a good night's sleep. The weather was fine and bright at first but it soon reverted to this summer's disappointing pattern of gusty wind and cool showers.

I plodded into Great Haywood to post the pension application and to get a paper, but otherwise we spent the rest of the day lurking in the boat.

A fair bit of time was spent on the internet by one, the other or both of us. The most visible evidence of this is a long post on the Building Sanity Again blog describing our meeting with Peter Mason. We were also taking advantage of a fast connection to research such matters as the additional cost of double glazed portholes (£20 a time, more or less).

In the evening Elanor took advantage of our continuing proximity to Burton on Trent to come for dinner and stayed for much of the evening. It was particularly good to see her since she will be away on a wrg camp when we come back through Burton next weekend.

This morning it was raining again. I made yet another trip into Great Haywood for bread and the paper, then we set off for a run to Penkridge over the next couple of days, just for the sake of the boating. The fact that we are doing so demonstrates an important point about the nature of our continuous cruising.

If we lived on the boat solely because it is a cheap lifestyle and so allowed us to retire early, we would have stayed put at Tixall for the next few days. It isn't a restricted mooring and we could always have nipped back to Great Haywood if we needed to fill the water tank. As it is, because we live on the boat in order to do as much boating as possible, we've chosen to move on.

Actually, we must really be dedicated boaters, because conditions today were far from ideal. It rained most of the time, we stopped to water at Milford Wharf and had the usual struggle to tie the boat there, and we got mixed up with a convoy of boats from the Watch House Cruising Club on the Bridgewater Canal.

Furthermore, about half the total length of towpath from Milford, round the south of Stafford, to the Hazelstrine Bridge at Stafford Boat Club was occupied by dedicated anglers.

When we got to Deptmore Lock, there were several boats waiting to go up and several more arrived behind whilst we were queuing. Because Deptmore is very deep, it's slow to turn round and it took us fifty minutes to get through the lock.

We've stopped on the towpath just beyond and have spent the afternoon largely relaxing in the boat, attempting the various quizzes in the Saturday Independent and doing this blog. (Sheila points out that she has been gainfully employed on the current crochet order, which is just as well as she has just had another enquiry. Since Sanity Again with have fourteen portholes, it's clearly going to be a while before she gets a break from making her decorative doilies.)

The afternoon is cold and clammy enough that we've put the central heating on. If the weather doesn't improve soon, I'm going to buy a bag of coal and relight the stove.