Good and less good (again)

It was a good meeting last night; Mercia meetings tend to be successful social events as well as getting stuff done. We discussed the further development of parts of the site with the creation of a wild flower meadow, a contemplation corner and an orchard, and agreed times to take some of these forward.

I’ll blog the actual dates when I’ve seen confirmation from the note taker.

Less successful was my attempt to resurrect the Hurricane. The aquastat didn't need resetting (so hadn’t overheated) and opening the fuel return cock half a turn and attempting four sets of three starts had no effect, implying that the problem wasn’t an airlock in the fuel line. Still, these are useful dodges for us to know for other times.

We have deployed our small oil filled radiator in the bedroom and bathroom to get us through the last few weeks in the marina and will call in at Calcutt as part of our first cruising schedule. We don't use the Hurricane very much when cruising, of course, as the calorifier and radiators get warmed from the engine.

On the plus side, the weather is still definitely spring like, even if a dramatic hail shower at lunchtime led to hail ricocheting off the roof, into the mushroom covers of the ventilators and so down into the cabin:

Drip catcher earning its keep

Hail piling up everywhere

The steel framework for the Boardwalk is growing apace. They’ve erected the central section and will now work out sideways to the ends, presumably keeping their fingers crossed that, unlike Braunston and many another canal tunnel, the surveyors have got the alignments correct:

It's grown even more since Sheila took this shot