We’ve had some heavy stuff
in the car for a while as we’ve been waiting to moor the boat somewhere with
easy access. Likewise, we still have the
old batteries on the roof as we haven’t been close enough to the car to offload
them. Karen had the bright idea of taking
the car into the CRT compound at Lapworth and getting it right next to the lock
outside the office. Having the boat in
the lock would be an ideal place do all the transhipment – a bit like fuel
boats when they deliver to lock cottages.
We went up one lock into the
basin where I spun the boat round to pull up at the services. I was going to get a pump out and so needed
the right side of the boat to be alongside the service point.
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Heading into the pretty basin
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There’s often a lot of activity
in the basin as boaters from the marina come down at the weekend to visit the
services so it’s always good fun to watch people doing their reversing and
turning manoeuvres, as long as no one is around to watch me of course 😉
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Going into
the lock up to the basin
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After the pump out Karen
went to bring the car down to the next lock and I reversed back into the basin
and turned round to go into the lock.
There were a few gongoozlers around including four ladies who were very
interested in how locks work. They were
staying in a holiday cottage for the weekend and had never seen a lock in
operation before. We let them help open
the gates and they were delighted, taking it in turn to take pictures of each
other.
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Buddy off to see if any of
the onlookers had any treats for him
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Once we were in the lock
and filled it up we transferred two large bags of dog food and more compost
from the car onto the boat and then took the batteries off and loaded them into
the car. I say we, but I mean Karen, as
we were being sensible about my back (still!).
We then went back down the
lock, reversed back across the basin, back down the first lock and got back to
our original mooring spot. So we
operated four locks only to end up back where we started!
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Moored back where we
started two hours earlier
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After lunch we drove to
the council tip at Solihull to dispose of the batteries. It was only when we got there that I realised
we had left all the bottles of old engine oil behind which was a bit foolish. They’ll
have to stay in the engine bay until we’re next near a tip or boatyard that
takes old oil.
Later in the afternoon
Karen washed, polished and waxed part of the boat. The last time we did this was back in April
this year at Luddington on the River Avon.
We only washed and polished it then but, with the bending, we both ended
up putting our backs out so we’ve been putting it off ever since.
We decided to do a little
section each weekend and used a little fold up table to prevent having to bend
over. What we really needed was a
milkmaid’s stool but we don’t carry one of those on the boat for some reason.
A bit later on, when we
were inside, there was a knock on the window.
It was Wendy with her new dog, Ziggy.
It was nice to see her; she and Austin were returning from having a few
days on the boat and she was walking the last bit. We had a good old chat as we hadn’t seen each
other since March so there was a lot to catch up on. In a few weeks they are going down to London
to cruise the Rivers Lea and Stort as they hadn’t been there before. We really enjoyed cruising those rivers and
were really quite envious of them – it seems a lot more than the three years
since we were there. It was when we
first got Buddy and we recalled how difficult it was to get him on the boat for
the first time – it was at Ware in Hertfordshire.
I’ve just looked at the
forecast for today (Monday) and it’s meant to be sunny this afternoon with the
temperature reaching 20 decrees – I clearly need to get the washing on!
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