Recovery day

The weather's not been quite as bad as forecast today, but we're still glad to have had a lazier day on Tixall. I was too tired yesterday to do more than a basic blog, which is a shame, as I could have gone on and on about how idyllic both the boating and the loafing were.

I might even have mentioned the considerate boaters who reopened Shutt Hill lock for us as we approached, thereby saving Sheila a bit of hassle; there were some boats tied right up to the end of the lock landing which would have made dropping me off mildly problematic, and getting back off and into the lock without scraping the nice new blacking even more so.

As his comment yesterday shows, this would have been a really good idea, as said considerate boaters were fellow blogger Nev and the long suffering and saintly Rachel.

/wahaha

My excuse for not recognising them is that they were in their new-to-them boat Percy, and very nice it looks too.

Thanks guys - hopefully we'll get a chance to inspect that superb looking boat next time our paths cross.

We strolled into the village in leisurely fashion this morning, first going to the southern end for a paper and some dental floss, then back to the Farm Shop for meat and bread. Sheila had found she was a bit short of potting compost to finish setting out her new plants in their troughs, so we nipped into the glass house there where we'd bought them to see if they had small bags of potting compost. The smallest they had was a grow bag, which would have been a bit of a lug along the towpath.

When we explained this to the nice lady she made us up a 10 litre bag of compost from her bulk supply and charged us just £1.50 for it. Good service indeed.

This afternoon we planned to rinse off and polish the starboard side of the boat, but it soon became apparent that it needed more than one go. The weed splashed up by the pressure washer had dried hard on, so we settled for an initial rinse and microfibring to get the bulk of that off. (Hint to Nev: if Percy looks like that after the pressure wash, get Lee to swill the hose over the cabin sides to take the worst of it off.)

The cabin side looks a lot better now, but will need the full monty next, that is a wash with detergent, a rinse and dry and then polishing in Karate Kid fashion.

("Wax on, wax off.")

We're still too weary to do that yet but hopefully will get to it either tomorrow or Friday.

Perhaps.

/nobigdeal