Back to Poynton for the weekend

9th & 10th October

Yesterday was a repeat of our last trip back from Macclesfield. We made a prompt start despite a lie in; Sheila boated whilst I breakfasted and I took over after she’d winded Sanity at Lyme Green. Once again the visitor mooring by the water point was free, and we walked down to Tesco for a top up shop.

The weather was bright but extremely chilly, and I was glad to leave Sheila bundled up on the tiller whilst I played with the new toy (the Mac Mini). We stopped at Whiteley Green just beyond Bollington for lunch then went on to fill the water tank at Poynton.

The breeze made it tricky to turn Sanity into her mooring, but a quick shove with the long shaft soon got her bow round and we tied as close to the edge as we have managed so far.

I spent the rest of the afternoon playing with the latest version of iPhoto; its face recognition facility is really quite remarkable and good fun. With its help I’m gradually getting the photo library labelled up, so that it will be possible to pull out all the photos which feature a particular person.

Today was a leisurely start. I went down to Poynton to buy the paper and post a letter, whilst Sheila tidied some of the chaos in Sanity caused by the computer packaging. A quick bit of cleaning made the boat respectable enough for the visit of Peter and Jan.

Meanwhile I ran a software update on the Mini; it wasn’t entirely successful because the internet connection wasn’t stable enough for some of the very big downloads involved. None the less, the update of iWork '09 has fixed the document conversion problem and we can now import Word documents into Pages and Excel spreadsheets into Numbers. I’ve yet to check how successfully these programs will save files so that they can be opened in the equivalent Office application.

This filled in time very pleasantly until we were due to set off to meet Peter and Jan in the Nelson Pit car park. Rendezvous accomplished, we drove over to Adlington for an excellent lunch at the Miners’ Arms. Service was a little slow perhaps, but it was Saturday and all the food is genuinely cooked on demand.

By mid afternoon we were back at the boat for a cup of tea and a biscuit and a review of photos of the family (and of Sheila’s Falconry session in the spring).

We now have the prospect of a quiet evening ahead of us; there’s not a lot scheduled for tomorrow either except a routine engine service.