Brinklow (back on boat until mid November)

Moving Jo into halls in Edinburgh meant we had a hectic and very tiring weekend.  We broke the journey from Kent by staying on the boat on Friday night and left for Edinburgh early on Saturday morning.  It rained all the way up and fortunately just stopped as we got to her halls; she had very little room to move in the car.

A decision we made last week was that we will have a new boat built.  We have looked around at many second hand boats but have not found anything that meets our requirements.  As we have been living on the boat for nearly a year now we know what layout and fittings we need and we can only really get what we want if we buy new.  It wouldn’t be so important if we were only using the boat for holidays and odd weekends but it’s a different story when we know we’re going to live on it for another few years.   This will be the shape and window layout of the new boat but we will have a different paint finish.  The shell will be built in Liverpool and the fit out will be done in Nantwich with delivery planned for next April.

On Saturday evening we stayed with my youngest brother, Richard, and his family in Linlithgow.  On Sunday morning Karen and I had a look round the different areas of Edinburgh then met Jo for lunch and were pleased that she seemed to have settled in well and was happy.  We then started the long trek back to the boat.  Soon after we crossed the border into England we saw a field of yellow sheep – several flocks had been dyed to celebrate the Tour de France last year.

We called in on Catherine in Nottingham on our way back as we had had two large bags of dog food delivered to her and needed to pick them up – knowing that we wouldn’t have fitted them in the car with all of Jo’s stuff.   

On Monday we drove into Coventry as we had some adminy things to do.  On the way back to the boat we did a big supermarket shop which reminded us that our way of life means we have probably been to more different supermarkets in the UK than most people.

We also took advantage of having the car to go to a garden nursery to buy winter flowering plants and compost.  Karen feels it’s time to replace most of the summer pots with winter pansies etc. and will no doubt get that done when I take the car back tomorrow.  It’s going to take most of the day to get the car back and then get back to the boat by train, bus and walking so will probably be back to proper blogging on Wednesday.