Three days of activity

11th, 12th & 13th March

It’s been a good three days, by and large. On Wednesday night, after I’d posted the last entry on this blog, we went down to the Boar’s Head in company with Barry Cooper and had one of their tasty meals. We were joined a little later by Peter Mason, who was staying overnight at the yard to catch up on paperwork.

Thursday dawned bright and calm, and I had a very pleasant walk down to the paper shop. I took the Garmin with me to compare the distance via the road with that coming back over the fields. In miles they are almost identical; the off road route took a few minutes longer, and is indubitably much pleasanter.

We spent the rest of the morning relaxing, and went back to the yard for some further gardening in the afternoon. It’s very satisfying to give the various bits of shrubbery a good spring cleaning, especially with the sun shining, the birds singing and the joiners whistling as they work.

On Friday, we had another relaxed start, mooching about in the boat until it was time to go to the yard for the weekly review of progress on Sanity Again. As usual, this can be seen in the photos on Flickr and is described in a post on the other blog. In summary, things are really buzzing now and it’s very exciting.

Back on the boat, I rang Towergate Mardon to accept their offer for insuring Sanity Again. As I’ve said on the other blog, I will do a special post there describing our thinking on this subject, but it won’t be for a few days.

Today, we decided to go to Marple to shop, and made a prompt start, eating breakfast on the way. It was a misty, murky morning, though not too cold at first. Marple was very busy by recent standards.

On the way, we passed Islay, the new Braidbar hire boat, tied at High Lane, and she passed us in turn after we had tied at Marple. The towpath moorings are no further forward than they were last time we were there, as can be seen in these pictures.

Thursday 25th February

Saturday 13th March

We got everything we needed in one session; we plan to have an Ocado delivery on Wednesday, so we were only shopping for fresh stuff and the barley wine which only seems to be available from Bargain Booze these days.

As had been forecast, the weather deteriorated as the day went on, with a bitingly cold wind springing up, and I was very pleased that it was Sheila’s turn to steer. Back at Poynton, we went on to the water point, filled the tank and returned to our mooring.

Having bought some fresh chicken and some cooked beetroot, I plan to cook a chicken and cardamom curry tonight with a beetroot and red kidney bean dish on the side.