Wild days in store

Elanor and Sally rolled up just after I'd showered yesterday and, since the rain was holding off, we all went for a walk along the towpath. Sal was in a particularly scatty mood, gambolling about, playing with two small terriers we encountered and trying to get a drink by kneeling down and stretching at the canal side, risking a sudden slide into the water all the while.

At one stage she started fishing things out of the cut, especially a largish tree branch which she waved about for a bit. She also had a go at retrieving a plastic bottle in the same way, but didn't quite manage it. She may be working on a new sport, Olympic Ducking for Stuff.

Today was another lazy start as the forecast was for wind and rain. We had some of both overnight, but haven't seen much precipitation today, just plenty of wind. At the same time it's turned much milder, the wind blowing from the south west, mostly.

We've sat tight in it, putting the time to good use by tidying the boat and the like, as well as doing a fair bit of web browsing. There's been quite a bit of traffic on the cut; most boaters had the sense not to slow down too much when passing by, keeping the revs on to  maintain control. Just one hapless soul tried to be more polite and ended up scraping along the side of Sanity Again.

We've got bow and stern lines out to chains through the piling together with a spring to a substantial piling hook at the stern, our usual mooring arrangement. As a result we've not been moving much despite the comparatively high speed passes.

Main achievement of the day was finishing almost all of the Independent Saturday Giant General Knowledge crossword. It was by one of the easier compilers this week, admittedly, but we were still pretty chuffed to get all bar three or four answers in without using Google.

We celebrated with a towpath walk after lunch.

Tomorrow looks a bit better windwise and there's no rain in the forecast, so we'll make the most of it to get through Rugeley and on to the Pig Farm mooring at Bridge 69. If Tuesday is as bad as it looks at the moment, we'll sit tight there until Wednesday and then make another dash through Colwich and Great Haywood to Tixall Wide.

We've got about a week in hand if we're to be at Norbury Junction on the 30th without doing long days.