An out and in sort of day

Unlike England's cricketers, who went in and then out... Ah well, at least we've got the Ashes back.

We had a very relaxed start, not finishing breakfast much before eight o'clock. I made a batch of multiseed and oatmeal dough and, the day being very fine, we took ourselves for a walk. We went along the towpath to the Whiteley Green moorings, from where you can cut through the car park and get down onto the Middlewood Way. Carrying on along there for some time along with the cyclists and Sunday morning joggers, we finally took a footpath back to the canal, rejoining it at Bridge 22.

That made for a pleasant stroll back on the towpath, being passed by many of the same joggers who had presumably gone on a bit further, to the road bridge (21), before heading back. It was a very pleasant two and a half miles, getting us back to the boat just in nice time for me to knock back the dough and shape it into rolls to pop back into the barely warm oven to prove.

I started the engine at ten and ran it for an hour, putting some bulk charge into the batteries and heating the calorifier. The bank was only down to 83%, so we could have left the engine off for the day if we'd wanted to. But I'd still have had to run the Hurricane on a warm day to get hot water, burning almost the same amount of diesel, and with quite a short run tomorrow, I'd have had to leave the engine on after we arrived at Poynton to get the batteries back up to full charge.

As it is, we've got enough hot water for the day and the solar panel has kept the state of charge up by covering the demands of the fridge and some phone and iPad charging.

It got windier and windier as the day went on and is now tipping it down, so it's quite unpleasant, frankly, warm and very humid. Hopefully things will be fresher and calmer tomorrow.

In case readers haven't seen the exchange of comments with Norwyn yesterday, we found The Vale to be one of the best pubs we've been in for a long time. It really is the way pubs used to be, family run, excellent food and beer and cheerful staff, nothing fancy, just solid quality. When I update the entry in the BOG Pub Guide, it will get five stars all round, for ambience, service and overall score.