Retracing our steps

We're getting into a routine with Elanor and Sally on board. Sheila and I get our breakfasts, walk Sally and give her her breakfast, then start boating. This lets Elanor have a lie in, being on her hols, but if she wants to get some steering, she has to get going before we finish for the day...

We've come all the way back to Kings Orchard, it being a very pleasant morning for boating, so Whittington was too soon and we decided we'd rather have a bit of road noise here rather than a lot of train noise at Huddlesford.

Elanor did a good chunk of steering, including the tricky stuff through Huddlesford with a fair bit of traffic the other way. It's a good mooring here and we've had only one untoward incident when a rather scruffy Serenity (one of the many) scraped all down the side of Sanity Again. When I remonstrated (quite calmly) the steerer said "It wasn't that bad"!!!

Must have been watching a TV programme featuring a pair of ageing actors...

We managed to get the roof, bow deck and well deck washed before lunch and have been taking it easy this afternoon. Tomorrow, on to Alrewas.

Hot mini blog

Boating was good today, though very hot. Sally especially doesn't appreciate it, makes it hard to keep cool when supervising. We got away from Branston in good time and had a straightforward run to Alrewas and on to Fradley.

Not a lot of traffic about for the first couple of hours, but it got steadily busier after Alrewas. It was my turn to lock, ably assisted by Elanor and supervised by the hound.

A sign of age creeping on: we've bought a GO Windlass, the ratchet one. It's very good indeed, working well both in ratchet mode and as a long throw windlass. In addition, the extra fixed socket below the ratchet one makes winding down very easy.

The only lock we were a bit slow through was Junction, where the volockie had his own pace of working. Sheila managed the turn onto the Coventry with no problem. It was getting on towards lunchtime, so we decided to stop at the bit of Armco just beyond Fradley that we remembered as being signed not to leave a boat unattended there overnight. It's now signed for CRT boats and loading only, so we just stopped for lunch and have come on to Kings Orchard for the night.

Tomorrow, Sutton Road Bridge and some retail therapy.

Lazing on a sunny afternoon

"In the summertime..." I know, showing my age again, but the music you dance to in your late teens and twenties is what you think of as proper pop for the rest of your life.

Anyway, things went pretty much to plan today. A seven thirty start and an uneventful but extremely pleasant run on a warm sunny day got us to our present mooring by half ten. We're just short of the new King's Orchard marina and will carry on to Alrewas, another run of about two and a half to three hours tomorrow.

It had been a bit of a broken night for me and a bad one for Sheila, her bruises having come out with a vengeance. I've put her back on the ibuprofen + paracetamol regime for 24 hours. We did a good bit of loafing on the bow in the sun until lunchtime, waving cheerfully to those boats which slowed down to pass us and with less bonhomie to those who didn't, including the one which towed a breaking wash past us.

The former category included some well known faces, in some cases friends, especially Yvonne on Fizzical Attraction and Peter and Janet on Sanity.

After lunch and a discussion about chicken purchases with Elanor, more loafing was undertaken, though I did break off to do a couple of routine jobs. I fired up the Mac Mini to sort out my mailboxes and to back up the iPad and I got the clothes bag out from under the dinette. Winter wear was put away or out for the wash and summer stuff, polo shirts, shorts and lightweight pyjamas, got out and stowed in my drawer. I also condemned some t-shirts and spare underwear I've not needed for the last year.

Tonight, another carbonara, I think, it's definitely a bit Mediterranean out there.

A lurking wet day

As foretold, we've spent the day indoors, not even emerging to go for a walk, it's been so wet. It did indeed rain for much of the day; a review of the forecast suggests that our best strategy will be to boat through to Sutton Road Bridge tomorrow, then sit tight again there over the weekend. We'll just have to take care not to tie under any trees in view of the likely wind.

Despite the horrible conditions, there has been a fair number of boats go by, one of the first of which was Caxton with her proud new owners George and Susan. We didn't get a chance to chat, it wouldn't have been fair to ask them to stop in the downpour.

Much internet stuff has been done and we rounded off a day more like winter than spring by watching Scales of Justice, the last episode of the Alleyn Mysteries BBC series. In addition a wash load was run whilst we had the engine on to charge the batteries, the solar panel not contributing much in the murk.

We've also been hit for the third time in three days, this time by a boat bearing a sign saying that it had just been sold by Venetian Marine, the marina and boat brokerage on the Middlewich Arm of the Shroppie. My first thought was that if you buy a boat not having any experience of steering one, the first few days are likely to be a bit hairy and indeed this boat proceeded to tack off down the cut. It was quite possibly heading for London to swell the numbers of residential boats there trying to stay within the Guidelines for boats without a home mooring.

But then I thought "from Venetian Marine, he's at least climbed the Cheshire Locks, passed through Harecastle Tunnel and worked right down the other side through Stoke, Stone, Great Haywood and Fradley. Even going all day it must have taken him five or six days, surely he should have the hang of it by now?"

We can go for a whole year without being hit, how come we're suddenly being clouted as often as Steve Pigott does on Dolce far Niente? Then Sheila realised: Steve's forever polishing his boat and we've just polished Sanity Again. The shine must dazzle the approaching boaters.

So there's your answer, Stephen. Stop polishing the thing and people will stop running into you...

:))

Turned out wet again

We had a bit of a lie-in this morning and didn't surface until seven. So Sheila got dressed and started boating whilst I went through the morning routine. I took over on the tiller in time to let her break her fast before we got to Woodend at half eight.

There's a fair amount of traffic about but we had a good run down Shade House and Middle locks and turned into the Coventry in one smooth move. We stopped on the water point and started the washing machine. Both points were in use, so the flow was slow, but it gave us time to have a coffee and dump the rubbish and recycling.

Setting off again we found ourselves boating through a light but persistent rain which became slowly heavier. By the time we got to Streethay it was really quite unpleasant and nearing midday to boot. I had it in my head that we were heading for at least Huddlesford, so was appropriately huddled over the tiller and grimly boating on.

Fortunately, Sheila had other ideas and proposed that we stop just beyond Streethay, near the entrance to the new marina on the nice Armco. This meant that by noon we were all sorted out and able to have lunch accompanied by mugs of soup.

We've dropped the cratch and lit the Squirrel whilst the rain rained and the wind blew with far more energy than we like. The forecast is if anything worse for tomorrow, so we're going to stay put. This is where all the stocking up comes into it's own; we've sufficient supplies to go a few days without shopping.

Beyond Huddlesford

It rained quite hard last night, which washed the smog out of the air. The solar panel was covered in a thin layer of the Sahara this morning.

For once we got our cruising time estimation about right; leaving at half eight got us to Huddlesford Junction at eleven. There was some space, but it was pretty busy with a mixture of boats, some clearly residential and some holiday boats. Since we didn't want to use the pub or the handy car park, we carried on to just before the new marina in the length before Streethay.

I was quite glad to finish; the wind was pretty cool and although it wasn't actually raining, it felt damp. Since we've stopped the sun's come out for a time, though it's retreated again now.

Apart from re-rolling the cratch cover into its summer position with the outside surface facing out, we've not done a lot this afternoon. I plan to make goulash for dinner; it's that sort of day.

Loafing Sunday

We've had a seriously lazy day today; this morning was rather cool and overcast, so we spent it indoors pottering with internet stuff. This afternoon the sun came out again and we read and dozed on the bow until Elanor and Sally turned up, bringing us our post in Sally's backpack.

It's the first time we've seen them for a while, so there was a lot of catching up to do. Sally, I'm afraid, chose to spend the time hunting "things" in the well deck where we were sitting, only occasionally breaking off to warn off passing dogs.

I tried to persuade her to do the blog, but she made it clear that she was far too busy.

Tomorrow we'll make an early start, top up the water at Fradley and go on down to Alrewas. We want to sort out routine dentist appointments, hopefully for this week, then we'll carry on through to Mercia in two stages later on.

Beyond Huddlesford

It's been a very good couple of days boating, cool and cloudy at first each time, but getting very warm indeed in the afternoon. We had a pleasant run to Whittington, though Sheila, who was steering, found the amount of traffic a bit stressful, what with the narrow bridge holes and the overgrowth on the offside.

No matter, there was a nice mooring at Bridge 80, handy for walking into the village to the Co-op before lunch and later for going to visit Des and Gill for a brilliant evening of good wine, merry talk and brilliant food. Thanks both, it was great.

Two downsides about that mooring, however – lots of train noise from the West Coast Main Line and very poor mobile signal reception. Apparently there's an O2 mast nearby, but all the other signals are either only just useable outside the boat or non-existent.

We decided to move on a bit to Huddlesford today, then changed our minds whilst underway. It was such a pleasant day for pottering along that I didn't want to stop when we got there, so we've come on to just beyond the entrance to the new Kings Orchard marina, just before you get to Streethay going this way.

The new marina is due to open on Monday, with the first boat in arriving tomorrow. About half the pontoons are ready for use and the service block looks finished from the outside. The contractors are very busy working there as I type this, so hopefully they'll have got round to putting some mooring rings on the pontoons by tomorrow…

We walked back to Huddlesford this afternoon to look for a couple of geocaches, but weren't successful with either this time. One was a nano cache (hadn't realised that when we set out or we wouldn't have bothered) and the other was in an area absolutely solid with bramble and nettle. It's the first time I've worn shorts all day this year, and I'm regretting it now.

Ouch.

We'll stay put tomorrow; Elanor and Sally are coming to see us, parking at Huddlesford and walking the towpath to find us.

And finally, welcome to anyone who's reading this for the first time as a result of the plug Damian Kemp gave me on the CRT Facebook page. In case you hadn't realised, the aim of this blog is to give a sense of what living aboard is like for us, both the highs and the lows (not that there's many of the latter) with an admixture of barminess from time to time, especially when Sally takes over my brain.

Woof!