Back to normal

Well, what passes for normal on this narrowboat. After a relaxing and recovering day yesterday, we got away just before eight this morning on a beautiful day. By half eight we had arrived at Yelvertoft. Dunwyngyn was already on the water point, but it's a double tap with quite good pressure, so we tied in front of them and ran the 30 metre hose out. I started a wash load running whilst Sheila swept hawthorn bits off the roof.

Dunwyngyn left before us – it took a good 45 minutes to fill the depleted tank. Off we went again along this quite delightful bit of canal, winding gently, mostly, through nowhere in particular. The towpath just before Bridge 28 had been recommended to us by Adam off Briar Rose and it is indeed an excellent mooring. There's quite a bit of it once you are through 27. There are even mobile phone signals, though the 3 signal doesn't have data. However we have a strong EE connection which I'm using for this blog post.

The whirligig has been deployed to dry the towels. There's still a bit of laundry to do, about a load and a half, I think, the next batch of which will probably be done on Saturday. After getting pretty run down by our standards, the batteries are nearly back to full charge – the tail current was below 4 amps when I stopped the engine today, less than the magic 1% of the bank's nominal capacity. We may get it down even further over the next week's boating.

We've had a walk this afternoon, along the towpath which is in only moderate condition. The winding hole is just through the next bridge, 28, and looks just about usable despite the boat tied on the towpath immediately before it.

Finally, a word of warning about the villainous practices of mobile phone companies, Vodafone in this case. I'd bought an extra 2Gb of data per month for £10 since it was the only viable data signal at Crick and pretty iffy at that. Today, I checked online that we'd not used it all up and noted that if I turned off the request they'd stop charging with effect from next month. Stupidly, I thought that meant that I'd still have the use of the remaining data for this month, so turned off the switch so as not to forget later.

Of course, what they do is stop the extra data allowance immediately even though you've not exhausted what you'd bought. We can manage without it now – we'll carry on through Crick Tunnel tomorrow on our way back, having just stopped to shop in Crick, and there was an EE signal on the other side – but it's still sharp practice. This priceless warning doesn't come when you go to turn the switch off, only if you open an explanation box next to it.

Does the application form for jobs at Vodafone ask if your parents were married, I wonder?

Location:Bridge 27, Leicester Section