Less wet, more wind

It's been another dramatic day, weatherwise. A lot of the rivers have closed as a result of yesterday's rain, and although we've not seen so much of that here today (more to come tonight), it's been incredibly windy. The boat next door Kilgarrah's coolie hat has just blown off her chimney and bounced off us; we were able to find it on the pontoon and pop it into her cratch.

We did manage the trip to the village this morning, getting a birthday card for Graeme and some mini baguettes for our lunch. We also bought a couple of meat slices to eat in the train tomorrow. That's had to be our exercise for today, apart from popping up the pontoon to use the facilities. Even that was a bit fraught, it was all too easy to imagine being blown off into the water, so strong were the gusts.

The mains power failed for a time this afternoon, though it's come back on now. It's actually quite handy; I'd checked and topped up the batteries earlier, so a little run down and recharge is no bad thing to mix the fresh distilled water into the electrolyte.

I also made sure that none of the batteries were showing any sign of distress, such as getting a bit warm. There's no reason why they should, of course, they are still less than a year old, but there have been one or two scare stories on Canal World recently. A failing battery left unsupervised with a mains charger running can overheat, boil and even blow up, spraying boiling sulphuric acid over everything, which is a bit inconvenient.

/omg

We've also dug our thermals out to take a pair each away with us; Graeme has been threatening to take us to the coast on Saturday, and it'll be more than bracing at the moment.

As I said yesterday, I'm not posting while we're away, so I'll see you all on Monday!