Lapworth (too windy to move today)

I know I was in two minds whether to move on on Friday or leave it until after the weekend.  As it was the weather made the choice for me.  It was pretty windy when we got up so, as it’s not much fun cruising in the wind, we will stay put until Monday.  We are away at Lauren and Lewis’s this weekend for a family get together with some but not quite all her brothers and sisters so that’s why we’re not moving over the weekend itself.

Our tulips and hyacinths are starting to come out so the front garden is getting really colourful now.

Our front garden

I mentioned that an Enforcement Officer (EO) came past on Thursday.  Well, as I expected, I got an email from CRT on Friday morning telling me I should be moving on.  I rang them up and they agreed to remove the warning from our record because of the lock closure.  Their excuse for sending it was because the email was system generated and the system didn’t know about the lock closure.

 

The email from CRT

The email was quite friendly and the tone has definitely improved.  We have had two emails previously, both of which were pretty terse and unfriendly.  As it was, both were unfounded as one overstay was due to another lock closure and the other was because the EO hadn’t noticed we were going in the opposite direction.  On that second occasion we had been from Middlewich to Runcorn and back in the two weeks between the recordings.  On both occasions CRT removed the warning from our records.

Buddy and I walked into Lapworth first thing as we had a parcel to send.  On the way we passed Natasha who lives on her boat with her boyfriend on a permanent mooring in Lapworth.  They used to be continuous cruisers like us and they were based in London for many years as they both worked there.  Her boyfriend then got a job at Coventry university so they moved up here.  Natasha still works in London but doesn’t have to go in every day as she can work from the boat.

The post office couldn’t really take the parcel as it was a phone with a lithium battery in it.  Lithium batteries are banned from international postage.  We were sending Matthew, our son in Norway, our spare phone whilst his tablet was repaired.  If we had sent it then it would have been destroyed when it was scanned at the freight airport.

We went for a good bike ride in the afternoon and got home just before it started raining.  I was reading up about canal and railway tunnels and came across this good picture that shows how boats were legged through tunnels before motor power.  It has always fascinated me and I was pleased to find this.  Looking at the picture it looks like an old boat that has been restored so maybe it's a modern picture and the guys were demonstrating how legging was done.