A brief excursion

28th & 29th November

When we got up and checked the weather forecast yesterday morning, we had a serious ponder whilst drinking our matutinal tea. As I said at the end of the last post, we’d planned to boat to Adlington in time for lunch, meet Peter & Jan at the Miners’ Arms, and then go on to Macclesfield today, Sunday.

However, the forecast indicated a return to the strong wind and heavy rain which has been such a feature of this month. Monday afternoon and evening were scheduled to be calmer but only at the price of a severe frost on Monday night. Faced with this programme of being blown about and then possibly frozen in, we decided that a return to the comfort of the home mooring after lunch would be a better plan.

Accordingly, having consumed a leisurely breakfast we went down to the water point, filled the tank and dumped rubbish before ambling on towards the visitor moorings opposite Lyme View Marina.

Lunch at the Miners’ was a success as always, although the puddings took a long time to arrive. Peter and Jan came back to Poynton on the boat with us and having had a cup of tea we all set off to walk back towards Adlington. Sheila and I turned back at bridge 16 and left Peter and Jan to complete their walk back to the car in what was by now a crepuscular light.

On the way down to Adlington we’d stopped briefly alongside Stewart Hooper’s coal boat, Anne, and asked him to deliver ten bags of mixed ovoids to our mooring. He was happy to do this, but indicated that it would be Monday before he dropped them off. We were, therefore, slightly surprised to see ten bags of coal stacked on the wharf edge when we looked out first thing this morning.

Stewart, we knew, was an early riser, but we’d understood that he was planning to get our coal as part of a fresh load from Stockport. No doubt when he calls to collect his money he will explain the change of plan.

I took advantage of a lull in the weather to go and buy a paper and a loaf of bread, but by the time I got back it was raining again. We therefore postponed organising the coal to our satisfaction until after lunch and a postponed assault on yesterday’s general knowledge crossword from the Independent.

It’s still an enjoyable task, but the quality of questions was even worse than last week. One of the answers was Wanderoo, the question being “Monkey, Macaca silenus, of India and Sri Lanka”. The Macaca silenus is in fact the Lion tailed Macaque, which only occurs in the Ghats of southern India. "Wanderoo" is a Sri Lankan name for the Tufted Grey Langur, whose systematic name is Semnopithecus priam.

It's bad enough having these obscure, Wikipedia stretching questions, but they might at least get it right.

By the time we’d done all this, the sun had popped out to tease us again, so we took the opportunity to get the coal organised. We took the two remaining bags of Excel off the roof, moved the tarpaulin to a convenient location under the hedge and then stacked most of the coal on it and folded it over. Two of the bags of ovoids having split, we put them straight into the coal box in the well deck.

We’ve spent the rest of the day on our usual activities. We expect the weather to be unpleasant again tomorrow, so that will be a case of more of the same. It’s scheduled to improve on Tuesday, so we shall probably take a run down to Marple for restocking on that day.