What a change in the
weather on Thursday. Before I ventured
out I could see people were walking their dogs past the boat wearing coats,
gloves and scarves (the dog walkers that is).
Straight after breakfast I decided it couldn’t be that cold and went for
a quick two mile circular cycle ride that Buddy seems to enjoy. After a few minutes I started to wish I had
worn gloves and a coat as well. When I got
back I got the stove going as it had got cold inside the boat too.
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These are the old British
Waterways buildings up from where we are moored
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The building on the left
is now owned by the couple I meet most days with their dog Brodie or
Bridie. The small building on the right
is still owned by CRT and is used as a local office for the CRT maintenance
guys.
When we got back to the
boat there were a group of people taking photos of it and close ups of the
flowers. I rushed inside so I could get
a picture of them taking a picture of us but was too late.
I was then aware of a boat
coming down through the lock and chatted to them a bit, remarking that they
were the first boat to come since lock 30 was opened the previous day - lock 30 is ony four locks further on from where we are currently moored. As it happened they were just
lucky and hadn’t realised the lock had been closed. They were planning on going to Stratford and
back over the next few days so I explained that the locks leading into Stratford
town centre are closed until the end of the month. Mind you it’s quite a nice walk into the
centre if you moor just out of town so they carried on anyway.
As the boat moved off,
Wendy and her dog Ziggy came by. I hadn’t
recognised them at first because the dog was new (a three month old
puppy). Buddy loved the puppy and was
really gentle with it. Wendy lives in
Catherine de Barnes (on the way to Solihull) and was really helpful when we
were looking for places to moor etc. when we were exploring the Birmingham
canals in 2015.
She and her husband,
Austin, keep a narrowboat at Knowle and also have a widebeam that their
daughter lives on in Blackwall docks in London.
I remember when they took the widebeam down the Thames to Blackwall,
someone had taken a brilliant picture of them from one of the high rise
offices.
It was good to have a catch up and as we were chatting, what
I thought was a CRT EO (Enforcement Officer – waterways traffic warden) came
past. He asked me if we were on the South
Stratford canal so I told him we were. I
also told him I thought he was an EO then realised he couldn’t be if he didn’t know
where he was. He replied that he was an
EO and it was hard to keep a straight face and I could hear Wendy snorting too.
There were heavy clouds
all day but no rain; then, just as the sun was due to set at 5.45 the clouds
rolled away and the sun shone for the last few minutes of the day.
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The sun came out for two
minutes at the end of the day
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