Settling to a new routine

29th & 30th September

There's been a sense of changing to a new routine over the last couple of days. Yesterday we went from the Deer Farm Bend mooring into Marple, where we were able to moor bow to bow with Priscilla who had managed a trip up to Bugsworth Basin with some friends since they left the Owners' Weekend.

We had a chat with them and then did the first of two shopping trips, bumping into Beryl off Priscilla as we did so. By the time we had finished shopping, it was lunch time .

Preparing to set off after lunch, I agreed to let New Horizons, the trip boat for the disabled, go first as we both needed to wind and she was on a timetable. This actually led to quite a delay for us as by the time they had done so other boats had appeared from both directions, including a BW workboat and tug.

The tug actually followed us in winding in the junction above the locks, so it must have been quite a sight for any gongoozlers on the junction bridge as the boats waltzed round each other.

What was also quite a sight appeared as we came back through the bridge and narrows. Whilst the tug winded, the other BW workers were using the HIAB arm on their wagon to load a wood chipper onto the workboat. They had a bit of trouble positioning it and at one stage one of them was standing on the workboat, underneath the dangling chipper, wearing neither hard hat nor life jacket.

According to Vince Moran, the BW Operations Director, a domestic lawn mower is too dangerous to be entrusted even to trained volunteers like wrgies, but his own staff can be seen breaking every rule in the safety handbook almost any time you like.

Despite the delay, I decided to return all the way to Poynton and moor on our allocated space in Marineville Moorings. It was a routine journey back, but the mooring presented some challenges as this space clearly hasn't been used for a while and is well silted up. We've managed to get Sanity to within about a foot and a half of the jetty. It does seem to be soft silt, so with luck a few departures and returns will let us get a bit closer still.

Today has been a day for catching up on various jobs. It's a good internet signal here so we've started ordering things like the new computer and the VHF antenna for Sanity Again. I'll do a blog post on the other blog tomorrow describing that process. We've also advertised Sanity on the Apollo Duck website.

This afternoon we did a circular walk using the towpath and the Middlewood Way and visited five geocaches in the process. This means we've now visited just over a hundred caches in our first year. This is by no means a rapid rate – some people have been known to do 125 in their first month – but we're still pretty pleased with it. Sheila has become very skilled at planning circular routes in this way.

We got back to Lord Vernon's Wharf just in time to see The Big Boat being manoeuvred under engine for the first time as Peter turned her round so that the bow is under cover in the paint dock. We bumped into Susan whilst watching and went and had a cup of tea with her and Sian, who is the Project Manager for The Big Boat. Then it was back to Sanity only to discover that I had lost one of my gloves somewhere along the line.

After a break, I went back out and retraced my steps, finding it on the path near the last cache we'd visited.

Depending on the weather, we may well pop down to Macclesfield tomorrow; we'll certainly have to pull across to the water point, so it will be interesting to see how easy it will be to get Sanity back out of her cosy bed of mud.