Getting away

Typically, after a busy day yesterday, I slept well for a few hours then woke at half four and lay and worried about the data connection over on Yellowhammer. It was one of those classic early morning things, telling myself not to be daft but still ruminating about it.

Tried reading, helped a bit but not much. It gets light early now, of course, and Sheila woke at six. In the end we made an early start. When I told Sheila of my concerns, she looked resigned then packed me off after breakfast armed with the 3 phone and the iPad. I walked round to Y and downloaded the Independent that I now buy online.

On my return to the boat I found that Sheila had her virtually ready to cruise. We only needed to disconnect and coil up the shoreline, replace the bow marina mooring line with the cruising one and set off.

It was just after eight on a beautiful Spring morning.

We had a very pleasant three and a bit hours of it to Branston, crossing with Ferndale at Dallow Lane. This is the boat once known to the blogging community as Gipsy Rover, but now owned by Diane and Raymond, who also blog about her.

Since getting here, we've been relaxing some of the time (a short siesta made up for my broken night) and then shopping at Morrisons. We've also stowed the isolation transformer, the dehumidifier and the shorelines under the bed.

Finally, a word about our radios, the PMRs. We're very pleased with the Motorola TLKR 8s, but after three years the rechargeable batteries were no longer holding many voles. You can buy replacements, but they are quite pricey. For much less, I've bought an eight slot charger from Maplin's which came with four AA and four AAA batteries. Another pack of AAAs and I'm able to run the radios for a couple of days between charges.

What's more, the charger has a 12 volt plug, so can be run overnight from the boat supply without needing the inverter on.

Result, as Sally would say.