Karen left for work at
five on Monday morning and will be staying in a B&B in Leamington until she
comes back home to the boat on Thursday evening.
This gives me and Buddy four days to get all the final preparations done
for moving onto the new boat. It seems we
are finally going to take delivery on Friday so we will cruise the last mile on
Friday and moor up next to the new boat so that we can transfer our things
easily. Craning is booked for Wednesday
so Buddy and I will be at the yard to get the pictures as she goes into the
water.
I use a free app called
Antenna Alinger which tells me which direction to point the aerial when we moor
somewhere new. It lists the seven
closest television transmitters by name, their distance away, the signal strength and the
direction to point the aerial. Each one
has an H or a V next to it and I have always thought this was something to do
with the frequency. Dave (Karen’s cousin) explained the other day that it
indicates whether the receiver should be angled horizontally or vertically. This probably means we will get better TV
reception in the more remote spots but at least I learnt something useful that day to keep in with my maxim of learning something new each day.
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Current transmitter is
Winter Hill which is 24.8 miles away and is marked with an H, hence the aerial
is horizontal here
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The weather was still mild
on Monday and we had some good walks. As
it is quite built up around Northwich we tend to stay on the towpath for our
walks. There is a dog waste bin not far
from the boat – I have to take a path off the towpath, onto a road and across a
bridge to get to it. Buddy seems to know
what I am doing so stays on the towpath – I think he is getting lazy now he’s
three years old.
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Buddy waiting while I pay
a visit across a bridge but he still keeps an eye on me
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It feels like winter is
coming now that we have got our winter pansies and spring bulbs planted. We haven’t got rid of all of the summer
plants yet as some are still flowering although they don’t need so much
deadheading now. The photo at the top
shows winter pansies in the bucket whilst the white summer petunias still going
well in the pot next to them
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| All the roof planters have been emptied and re-potted with bulbs and pansies |
We normally do our
re-potting out in the countryside so it is easy to dispose of the old soil on
woodland floors or under hedges. Now we
are moored in a town we have nowhere to get rid of the old soil so it is all
bagged up ready for when we find a waste site or we are out in the countryside again.
We also have to bag up the
ash from the stove so that we can dispose of it in the waste sites provided by
the canal. I can just see that when we
move on Friday we will have to lug several bags of ash and soil to the new boat
too!
On
Tuesday morning I went into Middlewich to get the foam cut for the dinette
seating. It was a fascinating operation to watch. We chose a firm
cushion as we don't really like soft seating. The cutter chose a new bale
for us (blue for firm). The white foam is softer and the multi-coloured
is recycled from offcuts of the blue and white foam. We needed four
pieces cut and two of them had one corner shaped to fit under the
gunwales. It took the cutter less than five minutes to do the job.
I was going to order a taxi back to the boat but the owner got one of his
drivers to take me on his way to a delivery in Manchester so that was
fortunate.
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The most recent reason for the delay in
the boat is because Jason, the painter, fell on his boat and has bruised his
ribs. Consequently he has only been able
to work a few hours a day recently.
Coincidentally he and his wife drink in the pub where we are currently
moored so we have sat and chatted with them a few times. They are a really nice couple and he seems to
be doing a really good job on the paintwork.
On Tuesday afternoon I
paid yet another visit to the boatyard to check up on things and make sure the boat
was still going in the water on Wednesday.
Everything is still on track and we will do all the paperwork and
handover on Friday. Mind you, there is
quite a bit of craning to do as there are two wide beam boats blocking the
entrance to the shed where our boat is.
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Two wide beams blocking
our exit from the boat shed
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