Coping with stormy weather

18th & 19th November

We seem to have shifted from the Indian Summer of late October straight into the winter weather without stopping for autumn. We’ve had either classic high pressure winter days with clear blue skies, frosty nights and calm weather or ferocious storms with gales and torrential rain. (For the benefit of my handful of non-UK readers, we are in the latter mode at the moment, with a vengeance).

Yesterday, after brooding on it overnight and rechecking the weather forecast in the morning, we decided it was not going to be practical to take the boat to Marple. In particular, the forecast for today, Thursday, was atrocious with wind speeds up to 49 mph and heavy rain. I hunted about for a bus to get me there, but the only service available would have involved changing in Stockport.

Accordingly, I rang the physio clinic and changed the appointment to Monday. Yesterday things were not too bad in the morning, so we pulled out and went to the water point. All our planning had assumed that we would be able to shop at High Lane yesterday and Marple today. Clearly that wasn’t going to happen but after we’d watered the weather was only a little damp, so we went to High Lane anyway to get a newspaper and some sandwiches for lunch.

I don’t know whether it has anything to do with the A6 passing through, but High Lane has a good choice of lunch outlets. For those not looking for something with chips, the main options are Billy’s Butties (sausage in a bun type stuff) or Danny’s Deli (smoked ham and coleslaw in a barmcake). We opted for the latter and had a range of fillings which were all very good.

Internally refreshed, we set off back to Poynton in a flat calm and a light mizzly drizzle. I managed the turn into the mooring in a single move, which was just as well as, in the conditions, there wasn’t a ghost of an excuse for getting it wrong.

As forecast, the weather then deteriorated and we spent the rest of the day tucked up in the cabin.

It was incredibly windy overnight and continued so into the morning, but the threatened rain had been cancelled. We walked down into Poynton to get essential shopping; stocks of red wine and beer were desperately low. Having bought all we needed, we then hung about to catch the local bus, service 391, back to Higher Poynton. It stops just outside the pub The Boar’s Head, which is just a few minutes walk from the moorings. Its only drawback is that there’s just one an hour.

This took up most of the morning. After lunch Sheila sawed up some more firewood and we have again spent the rest of the time pottering about in the cabin. The weather forecast is still not good for the next few days, but it is at least a little better than the last 48 hours.

It looks as if there will be another comparatively calm spell tomorrow afternoon, which is just as well as we need to get a pump out before the end of the weekend. Tomorrow morning we’ll make our regular visit to the yard and take some more photos of Sanity Again. They were at last putting the portholes in when we came past today, so there should be some interesting stuff to show on the other blog tomorrow afternoon.