Better than going for a Burton, anyway. The internet connection at Branston was quite tedious to deal with. I'd bought a 24 hour pass from O₂ the day before yesterday, and that ran out just after lunch. I didn't want to cough up another couple of quid for the afternoon, so used the Vodafone phone as a bluetooth modem.
That costs 50p for 50 Mb, so just what's needed for a bit of fill in coverage. The problems were, a) it took a while to persuade Sheila's MacBook to agree to use the connection via my Mac Mini, and b) it was very slow, and got slower as the day went on. In the end, we just gave up. It was too much hassle, knowing that we would be back in a good coverage area today.
Apart from that, it was very pleasant at Branston. The sun shone, we pottered about, and in the afternoon Elanor drove over with a bunch of books to swap for some of ours on the boat. (She keeps a library for us at her house.)
She ate dinner with us and went on to obedience training with Sally. She continues to wrestle with the problem of persuading Sally to recall when there are bunnies about, but apart from that she's coming on well; they achieved the Silver Good Citizen standard last week. The trainer at Capable Canines reckons that hunting dogs will hunt, and that there's only a limited amount you can do to persuade them not to.
Today, we made a relaxed start, then ambled through to Shobnall, tying by Jannel cruisers yard first off. I took some recycling round to the tip, then we both walked up the road to the Marston's Brewery Shop for some supplies.
After a coffee back on the boat, we chugged on to Shobnall Fields for the afternoon. I can easily walk to the hospital for my clinic appointment from here, but we won't stop overnight. Instead, when I get back from the hospital, we'll carry on out into the country a bit for the sake of a quiet night.
This is where the IWA National Festival will be this year. We remember the last one here, in 2004, very well, but it's still hard to see just where all the boats will fit in this time round. I'll be blogging about it on the dedicated blog, now called Shobnall Fields Forever, so you'll be able to see from that just how the Waterspace Team manages it.
2 comments:
Dopily reading this first thing this morning, I had a very bad moment; I thought you meant that the boats were breasted up through Willington! We've made it here (and there's lots of room).
In '04, the Festival moorings ran from Horninglow to Branston, wide beams below Dallow Lane, obviously, and then doubled up narrowboats above, with occasional passing places.
This year, there's some talk of using the offside for visiting boats, as well as the exhibition boats on Shobnall Fields. Let's pray for a dry summer...
Cheers
Bruce
Congratulations Sally - the silver award is a big achievement.
Lynx is due to try his silver in April - he's got a good chance of passing but he won't play in class and that's the first test!
Sue, nb Indigo Dream
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