Beyond Huddlesford

It's been a very good couple of days boating, cool and cloudy at first each time, but getting very warm indeed in the afternoon. We had a pleasant run to Whittington, though Sheila, who was steering, found the amount of traffic a bit stressful, what with the narrow bridge holes and the overgrowth on the offside.

No matter, there was a nice mooring at Bridge 80, handy for walking into the village to the Co-op before lunch and later for going to visit Des and Gill for a brilliant evening of good wine, merry talk and brilliant food. Thanks both, it was great.

Two downsides about that mooring, however – lots of train noise from the West Coast Main Line and very poor mobile signal reception. Apparently there's an O2 mast nearby, but all the other signals are either only just useable outside the boat or non-existent.

We decided to move on a bit to Huddlesford today, then changed our minds whilst underway. It was such a pleasant day for pottering along that I didn't want to stop when we got there, so we've come on to just beyond the entrance to the new Kings Orchard marina, just before you get to Streethay going this way.

The new marina is due to open on Monday, with the first boat in arriving tomorrow. About half the pontoons are ready for use and the service block looks finished from the outside. The contractors are very busy working there as I type this, so hopefully they'll have got round to putting some mooring rings on the pontoons by tomorrow…

We walked back to Huddlesford this afternoon to look for a couple of geocaches, but weren't successful with either this time. One was a nano cache (hadn't realised that when we set out or we wouldn't have bothered) and the other was in an area absolutely solid with bramble and nettle. It's the first time I've worn shorts all day this year, and I'm regretting it now.

Ouch.

We'll stay put tomorrow; Elanor and Sally are coming to see us, parking at Huddlesford and walking the towpath to find us.

And finally, welcome to anyone who's reading this for the first time as a result of the plug Damian Kemp gave me on the CRT Facebook page. In case you hadn't realised, the aim of this blog is to give a sense of what living aboard is like for us, both the highs and the lows (not that there's many of the latter) with an admixture of barminess from time to time, especially when Sally takes over my brain.

Woof!