With only 15 weeks of work to go now,
Karen has managed to relinquish some of her responsibilities already. This meant she didn’t have to work on Friday
for a change so, in the morning, we walked to Alvechurch along the towpath and
also had a look around the town/village which lies about 1/3rd mile
from the canal. There are a lot of modern houses in Alvechurch which
gives it a town feel, but the independent shops and friendly passers-by give it
a village feel. Strangely it has two butchers’ shops, so we took a while
debating which one to choose when stocking up on meat over the weekend.
When we got home, Karen
made some soup for lunch whilst I moved the boat down to the water point
outside the Hopwood House pub, took on water, and then moored up a bit further on next to a
little lay by. This was ideal as we
needed more coal and as there are no fuel boats on this part of the canal, I
drove to the coal merchants at Hockley Heath.
I say ideal as it meant it was easy to offload the coal bags onto the
boat.
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Parking next to where the
boat is parked
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A couple of weeks ago I
had bought coal at Lyons boatyard on our way to Hopwood and as they didn’t have
our usual brand I bought two other brands.
We have tried both and neither burn as well as our usual brand
(relatively ash-free and hot). As the
weather was predicted to be a bit colder over the coming week I was more than
happy to drive to Hockley Heath as they stock our brand – oddly, even though
fuel boats seem to stock it, boat yards don’t seem to.
Later on, we cruised down
to Alvechurch and although it was crisp and sunny, cruising wasn’t easy as the
sun was very low and in our eyes. We
decided to moor up by the Crown pub right opposite the new marina that is being
built there.
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Our mooring for the next
week (opposite the new marina)
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We went for a couple of
pints in the pub which seemed to only take men as customers as Karen was the
only girl there. They were very friendly
though and the landlord said Karen could use the car park during the week
especially if we had the odd drink in his pub 😊 We
had thought of cruising on a bit further on Saturday but with good parking near
the boat and a non-muddy towpath we decided to stay put.
Further on from where we
moored, at the other end of Alvechurch, is the boatyard where our first boat
was built. It was built as a hire boat in
1992 and we bought it at the end of its serviceable life but had some happy
years on it.
Once we were up on
Saturday (which was a lovely frosty morning) we decided to go for a bike ride
and then pick up the car that we had left at Hopwood on Friday. We had left the car next to a pig field and
Buddy found the pigs very interesting.
In the afternoon we walked
into Alvechurch town/village, visited the butchers and greengrocers and then
spent the rest of the day indoors. We did come across this sign which can be viwed in so many ways, including an elephant washing itself.
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