After breakfast on
Wednesday, Buddy and I walked Karen to the station which was only a mile
away. She was off to Wilmslow for a few
hours dress shopping for Sophie and Yanos’s wedding which is three weeks away.
On the way we passed the
winding hole where there is a large patch of the invasive, and toxic, giant hogweed growing
on the offside. This patch has been here
for some years and for some reason, rather than clearing it, a danger sign has
been erected. We noticed a few plants
were also growing on the towpath side so made a note to contact CRT in case
they hadn’t been reported.
It was quite a chilly and
cloudy day, so I spent the morning servicing the engine and doing all those
other monthly checks we have to do.
After an early lunch Buddy
and I walked to Whaley Bridge to have a look around. It’s the sort of place where I would find Victorian
post boxes but, sadly, they had either been replaced by later ones or they didn’t
bother to post letters in the 19th century.
You may be glad to know I
only took one photo and that was of the basin at the village.
 |
The basin was used for the
transhipment of limestone from canal boats onto the Cromford & High Peak
trackway to Cromford. The trucks were
pulled by a mixture of horses, stationary engines and latterly, steam engines.
The weather cleared up on
our walk back and Karen called when we were nearly home saying she was on the
train. As it had warmed up, I dropped my
fleece off at the boat as we walked past and carried on to meet Karen from the
station. She had had a successful trip –
no doubt because she was on her own 😉
I put the kettle on for
tea and coffee on Thursday morning and a couple of minutes later the gas had run
out. Most boaters will agree that gas
bottles run out and need changing in the most awkward of times or in the most
inclement of weathers. This time the sun
was shining so I was happy to go outside to change the bottles over (quietly so
as not to wake the neighbours of course).
What I hadn’t realised was that it was a frosty morning, so I had to be
extra careful getting the empty bottle out of the gas locker and connecting up the
new one.
 |
Just in case you’ve never
seen a gas locker with one bottle removed or a neatly coiled hose before 😉
|
Fortunately, the sun had
melted the ice on the bows, but I was still extra careful. We hadn’t been expecting a frost, so Karen
was a worried about her plants, but I managed to convince her they would be
OK. It’s funny, but Buddy blames me for
extremes of weather too; if it’s pouring with rain or too hot he looks at me as
if to say, ‘Why are you letting this happen?’
No comments:
Post a Comment