On the move with two boats again

29th & 30th April, and 1 May

It’s been a good three days, with a brilliant evening with Gill and Des Barnard last night. In consequence, I’m a bit weary this afternoon, so forgive me if this post is short on flowery phraseology.

Wednesday night, Elanor came to stay, and we had a pleasant family evening. Thursday morning, the cunning plan was to be away at nine, so as to arrive at Fradley around 10.30, with the best chance of getting mooring spaces. This all worked out and came together very satisfactorily. Elanor steered Sanity and I took Sanity Again, whilst Sheila lock wheeled and got well exercised.

Elanor had been a bit unsure about single handing after a break from steering a boat, but in fact dropped back into the swing of it straight away, like the true boatwoman she is (she’s been boating, on and off, since she was six months old.)

The only tedious bit was one of the Hunts Lock moorers, Such As Life, who had decided to wash his boat on the special water point installed for them. Since that point is also the lock landing for Hunts, and there was a lot of traffic, it was, shall we say, not exactly considerate boating.

Safely tied at Fradley, we had a good session off loading all the rubbish that had accumulated whilst we were hanging around Alrewas. Elanor stayed for lunch, then set off to walk back to her car at Alrewas, just as the rain came on, naturally.

We took a walk in the rain ourselves, later on, just to get out in the fresh air, and ended up having tea and chat with Alan and Liz on Streamline, which was tied in front of the shop and pub.

Yesterday, we made an early start, as we wanted to move the two boats towards Fazeley. After downloading a nice email from the guy who is buying Sanity, I took Sanity Again up Junction Lock and round onto the Coventry to the water point here. Whilst the tank was filling, Sheila went back and fetched Sanity, then she led through to Whittington, where we were able to tie just before Bridge 80.

Elanor popped out to see us again, bringing our postal voting papers, then Des and Gill came along to inspect the new boat. As I’ve said, we went to them for dinner, and didn’t get back until after midnight.

Making a rather more leisurely start today, we’ve come across to Fazeley, tying by Sutton Road Bridge as usual. We’re the only boats here, but that’s probably because this is a continuous cruiser’s mooring. There seem to be a lot of hippy hutches lurking between Huddlesford and here, but they tend to congregate by road bridges that have handy parking.

We’ve done two shopping trips, and will fit at least another one in tomorrow. We need to take Sanity to Fazeley Mill Marina to get her pumped out, and maybe to make arrangements to leave her there whilst the survey and final paperwork is done to complete her sale; it all takes as long as selling a house, it seems to me.

Meanwhile, I've done a short additional post on Building Sanity Again, and put another five photos up on Flickr.