Back again

Two weeks in April

It’s been a while since I posted here, I know, but life has been just a tad busy!

We had a great visit to Graeme and Cathy, and renewed our acquaintance with Daniel and Alexander. Hiring a car from Enterprise worked really well, and didn’t cost significantly more than two return tickets on the train. Not good for the planet, but it was very handy to have the use of the car whilst we were there.

Back at the yard on the Friday, we found that Sanity Again was very nearly finished. She is in almost every respect better that we had hoped, which is saying quite a lot. In a few days, I’ll do a post on the other side setting out the stuff that has worked really well, but high on the list must be the Hurricane heating, the white ceiling and the cooker (but that’s just the top of a very long list).

With the invaluable help of Roger Millin, we set off on the Saturday to boat to Alrewas. The itinerary and highlights went like this:

• Saturday 10 An easy day just as far as Gurnett Aqueduct, where we did a show round Sanity in the afternoon.
• Sunday 11 Serious boating commenced, with an eight o’clock start, down Bosley and on to the Little Morton Hall mooring for the night. Sanity Again is quite deep draughted, and progress was slow on the shallow Macc.
• Monday 12 We had intended to get to the top of Stone, and made good progress towards that, with a quick passage of Harecastle, but by mid afternoon we were pretty weary, and stopped on the Wedgwood moorings just before Barlaston.
• Tuesday 13 Getting into the routine now, with another great day's boating in fine weather. We’d planned to make Great Haywood, but decided that the country mooring a mile before Hoo Mill would be better.
• Wednesday 14 Sanity Again needed water, so we set off at seven, leaving Roger to follow on in Sanity at the usual time. By 7.45 we were on the water point at Great Haywood, and filled up by half eight, even though her big (780 litres) water tank was over half empty. Then, when Roger arrived, on we went, aiming for the top of Shade House. We stopped in Handsacre for lunch, then went on to discover that the Shade House moorings were full, so came on down the flight, and tied both boats without difficulty on the visitor moorings opposite the cafe.

This morning, Roger left us, Elanor taking him back to Higher Poynton to collect his car. After he’d gone, we took Sanity on down to Bagnall Lock, where again there was plenty of room. We’ve got a show round there tomorrow morning, and we’ll take Sanity Again down to join her first thing.

We’ve been pottering on board for the rest of the day, gradually getting things put away where we want them.

Because we’ve been boating so hard (for us) I’ve not been keeping my usual notes of who we met and so on, so I’ll just say thanks to all those blog readers and fellow Braidbar owners whom we’ve seen during the week and who made nice remarks about the new boat.

And of course, yet again thanks to Roger for great company and brilliant boating.