Another day at Wheaton Aston and a very short cruise

The mooring we were on overnight turned out just a bit noisy and, as I said yesterday, was opposite the winding hole. The boat in front of us ran a small genny on his back deck in the evening, though to be fair he was careful to turn it off before eight o'clock. Not so considerate were two boats on the long term moorings on the offside, one of whom didn't stop their engine until half nine.

Since there was plenty of room on the visitor moorings in the cutting through the bridge, and a check with the 3 phone showed that there was adequate signal on that service at least, we moved onto them as soon as we got back from shopping in the village. So we've had all of 10 minutes cruising today.

There are two general stores in Wheaton Aston, one obvious one on the main street and one, a Spar, tucked away on the far side of the church.

Dances with Dragons is still here but Margarita has moved on. We've had another good natter with Mike and Polly off the former boat, whilst on our way to glean some kindling, of which there was a decent amount just lying around on the towpath and under the hedge.

We had planned to rinse down the starboard side of the boat and give it a coat of polish today, but the weather has been against us, with sunshine interspersed with heavy showers, some featuring large hailstones.

Needless to say, as soon as we'd abandoned this plan and gone kindling hunting instead, the sun came out and stayed out.

The internet connections on both T-mobile and 3 continue to be intermittent. The signal strength looks good, but half the time although the modem appears to connect, no data gets transmitted. By using first one and then the other we're managing to stay in touch with the outside world; I don't know why the inhabitants of this part of the world are so badly served by the phone companies.

As we move further north it's liable to get worse; Gnosall is always bad and Norbury not much better. Fortunately, the cafe at Norbury has free WiFi, so we'll be able to use Sheila's laptop at least. I've set up an Ocado delivery for the first day we're on the dock and I'll want to get online to make the final changes to it the day before.