On Friday morning, Lesley
(a work colleague from those pre-retirement days) got in touch as she and her
husband, Mike, were in the area. They
came over for the morning and we had a good old natter and catch up. They brought us a pumpkin which Karen will
make into pumpkin and chilli soup over the weekend and display the carcase on
the roof. Fortuitous really as this is
the first year we haven’t made pumpkin faces for the roof at Halloween.
I have mentioned Mike and
Lesley before as they are our lucky friends who have bought a plot of land in
the middle of Cropredy, complete with canal side mooring. Not only are they designing a new house they
are also designing the layout for a new narrowboat they are going to have
built. They were pleased to see that our
boat was of the same layout that they think they want so picked up lots of
useful measurements and information.
After Mike and Lesley left
we had the boring job of trekking to Redditch to put more stuff into storage
and also retrieve a few items we will need whilst winter cruising.
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Buddy, as usual, not sure
what to make of our bricks and mortar house which now seems to be in a big box
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After Redditch we drove to
Kiln Farm marina near Rugby to visit a seamstress. We need to get our dinette seating covered so
we can then decide on the colours for the curtains in the saloon – our last major
inside job. We managed to choose the
material but Sarah can’t get them ready for a few weeks as she is going away for a
while.
On Saturday we were land
lubbers for the day again and helped our daughter, Catherine, move from Nottingham to
Loughborough. When we moved Catherine into
Nottingham it only took one car journey.
She has now amassed more stuff so we ended up having to make two trips –
at least Buddy got a train ride as he and Karen made the journey from
Nottingham to Loughborough by train.
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Full to the gunwales!
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She is now living very
near the old railway line where engines are in steam most weekends. It always makes my spine tingle when I hear a
steam locomotive passing and we were fortunate that one went off on a journey
whilst we were unloading the car.
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Catherine and Karen
outside Cat’s new home
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Poor old Buddy has had a
couple of boring days so we must make sure he gets plenty of walks on
Sunday. We will probably move on on
Sunday and find somewhere quiet like Flecknoe where we can be on our own for a
few days. We are surprised how long we
have stayed in Braunston as being in a long line of boats is not really our
thing.
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Moored in a line at
Braunston although some boats have already left this morning
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Now that half term is over
the canals will be less busy. This is
also the time of year when the main maintenance work is carried out and
sections of canals are closed for a few months at a time. This also reduces the traffic but does make it
interesting picking and working out winter cruising routes around the
stoppages.
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Buddy telling me that he
really wants to go on a longer walk and not towards the car again
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