Wednesday 26 April 2017

Eating well and cheaply

We've had a change of plan about today. The pub was amazingly noisy last night – we think they must have had a party in the teepee in the grounds – and it really put us off the idea of eating there. That and looking at the menu on their website. We are talking £9 - £10 for a starter and £20 for a main course. Fine for a celebration meal, but not for a casual night off cooking.

So instead, we made two more trips to the supermarkets. The first was straight after breakfast. We popped into Morrisons to get a couple of pasties for tomorrow before they all sold out and then went on to Aldi to buy whatever was on our list that they were stocking this week, including some meat.

Back at the boat, we stowed things away, drank a mid-morning coffee and relaxed for a while. Then it was back along the route to Morrisons to try the lunch in the café. It was remarkably good and very cheap. In fact, Sheila's lamb shank, my sos, egg, chips and beans and two bottles of fruit juice cost the same as one starter at the Queen's Head. They were decent but not enormous portions and we felt perfectly well fed. That's something to remember for next time I'm feeling lazy about cooking.

I should mention here a tweak to the route I described yesterday. If you are just heading for Morry's, bear left rather than turning right when you reach the end of the footpath, going round the other side of the Roman Glass unit. This takes you to a much better access to the car park and is a bit shorter.

Feel well fed and exercised, we did nothing very much for the first part of the afternoon, but got going a bit later. Sheila knitted a some more of my Guernsey and I went down the weedhatch. The tiller has been shaking a bit and the boat didn't feel as responsive as usual as we finished yesterday. Sure enough, there was a big bunch of weed wrapped round the shaft between the stern post and the prop, easy enough to drag out.

Whilst there, I dipped the fuel tank. It's just on half full, so we'll stop at Alvechurch to fill up. I also touched in a scrape that had appeared on the upper tunnel band. I think I did it by catching the boat when trying to close a lock gate too soon. It had a bit of metal sticking out from the mitre, drat. Fortunately, it was only the cream 154 colour that had come off, the underlying primer was intact, so a simple job to touch it in.

I've emailed the Saltisford Arm Trust about spending a couple of nights there after we've worked down Hatton. They are always very welcoming – the first night is free then it's £5.50 per night for up to a fortnight. They confirmed that they could take us and that it will be OK to have some post sent to us there and to get an Ocado delivery.

Tomorrow's offering here might be a bit brief, after we've worked 29 locks...



2 comments:

Adam said...

Last time we were down that way, which was admittedly a couple of years ago, Anglo Welsh by the tunnel were much cheaper for diesel than Alvechurch. If you find out, maybe you could email the prices to the chap who runs that diesel price website, as they haven't been updated since August 2015. http://diesel.fibrefactory.co.uk/

Bruce in Sanity said...

Thanks, Adam.

We'll take a look at AW, then.

Cheers

Bruce