12th, 13th & 14th September
This is going to be a rather bitty post as I catch up. On Thursday as we boated to Alrewas we had an alarming encounter above Barton Lock. I'd just got clear of all the moored boats and opened the throttle to bring Sanity up to cruising speed, when I saw a bow emerging from the marina entrance. I dropped back to tick over and sounded the horn, but the boat just kept coming.
In fact, Anturio IV proceeded to come straight out of the marina in front of me, and it was only by going hard astern that I avoided T-boning her. She ended right across the cut and then with difficulty turned and stopped on the temporary moorings just outside the marina. She has one of those silly looking quasi Dutch Barge wheelhouses, and I suspect that her steerer could neither see nor hear me.
I confined myself to the observation "It's a good job I can stop quickly" as I passed her seemingly oblivious crew, but I was still shaking my head when we reached the queue for Wychnor lock.
As I've said in the last post, there was a lot of traffic about, really quite a surprising amount, and it took us three and a half hours rather than the usual two and a bit to get to Alrewas, where we found a scarce space on the fourteen day moorings.
Fortunately, it was a great day for boating and apart from anxiety about finding a mooring it was a very pleasant trip. Others seemed less relaxed. Sheila had stayed on the towpath after Alrewas Lock, and when she'd found the space by the gate into Mill End Lane, she signalled to me that it was there and also that there was a boat coming the other way.
The steerer of that boat however complained to her that she hadn't told him I was coming. It's not clear what else he thought a woman standing on the towpath with a windlass in her belt and waving her arms around might imply, but after we'd passed and I'd pulled Sanity into the mooring space he disappeared off round the corner still shouting his head off.
Friday was a quiet, doing-bits-and-bobs day and on Saturday I abandoned Sheila for the weekend to join in a stag do for a fellow wrgie who, at the age of 64, is marrying for the first time.
It just goes to show you shouldn't drop your guard no matter how late in the game it is.
Actually, it was a great weekend, and I can strongly recommend the Claydon Museum of Bygones, the Wychwood Brewery Tour and The Case is Altered at Lapworth.
Back on the boat, it was a quiet evening on Sunday.
Today, we've been to the dentist for routine check ups, and I had my diabetic review. All of these were reassuringly normal and we can now look forward to the village walk tomorrow before heading north on Wednesday.
The only outstanding problem concerns Elanor's Aerobed. I had borrowed it from her for Saturday night and found out the hard way that it had a slow leak. I've identified the very small split responsible and made one attempt to patch it. I'm waiting to see if this has been successful, but a discussion forum I've found suggests that it may be a bit tricky to repair.
If the patch using the supplied repair kit doesn't work, apparently some wetsuit glue called Aquaseal offers the best hope of success.
STOP PRESS: I've had a phone call from Nick Wall, Editor of Canal Boat, to say that a bottle of whisky is in the post.
3 comments:
That Wychwood Brewery tour wasn't in Witney, Oxfordshire by any chance was it? If it was you were in my home town and, knowing what you're like, I would have forewarned the residents ;-)))
Roger
Since there's only one Wychwood Brewery, and it's in Witney, yes it was.
The guy did say that they'd seen a sudden loss of trade a few of years ago and got taken over - when did you leave to go up North?
;-}}}
Bruce
Unfortunately, of the two pubs in the village that I inhabited (just south of Witney), neither served Wychwood...if only they had done so instead of the mediocre muck that they did serve. Still, it's rough up north, we're forced to drink all sorts of lovely ales solely in an effort to keep the economy going you understand. ;-)))
Roger
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