Thorlby (how many supermarkets do we need?)

Thursday evening back at Thorlby and back in oystercatcher territory

We had a lot to do on Thursday as we were getting ready for our annual family weekend camping trip to Gordale Scar.

Karen walked along the towpath to Aldi first thing to get all the food needed for Friday – as it was 1 ½ miles away she took Buddy with her so he could have a walk too.  This left me in charge of pushing the boat over to the other side of Skipton basin to get a pump out and a new bottle of gas (to be fair, Karen would prefer not to be around when we have a pump out anyway ☹).

Whilst I was waiting for Karen I made sure I had the complete list of mods we wanted the boatyard to do for us ready for taking the boat to France next March.  I was meeting Ian at 10 to go through the list and had a mild panic when I realised I didn’t have the dimensions of the new extra-large dollies we need fitted at the front and rear of the boat.  A frantic phone call to Mike & Aileen would soon sort that out; unfortunately, they were negotiating a lock on the Rhone at the time, but Aileen soon rang me back and supplied the dimensions they have on their boat and have served them well for the last couple of years over there.

As it was, Ian was called away on an emergency breakdown, so we agreed to meet next week when we plan to come back to Skipton again.

Karen still wasn’t back so I had another walk down the Springs branch and found an entrance to an old wharf.  All that remains is the two entrance posts, the wharf and entrance itself having been filled in many years ago:

   

When Karen was back we set off back for Thorlby, she helped me through the first swing bridge and whilst I stopped for water, made bolognaise sauce for 20 people to make it easier tomorrow evening at the campsite.

The ingredients (amongst other things) Karen carried back in her rucksack from Aldi

I had to queue at the water point but a nice liveaboard guy who was working from home, judging by the computer screens we saw through his hatch, let us tie up beside him whilst we waited:

 Waiting for a hire boat to move off the water point 

After a couple more swing bridges we were back at Thorlby and moored up in front of Dave again.  We had lunch and then walked the 2 ½ miles to Gargrave to pick up our car which had been in for an MoT and service.  Luckily it passed the test without any problems, but we did have to have a tyre replaced because one was damaged.

The garage also agreed to buy my parents’ car and use it as a service courtesy car so that’s another tick on the list of things me and my siblings have to do 😊

On our walk we passed a sad pile of stanking planks at Highgate swing bridge.  I say sad because most of them were rotten and falling apart – they cannot have been used for many a year:

Sorry looking stanking planks

After picking up the car we popped in to my parents’ house and got all the camping gear ready for picking up on Friday.  We then went to visit my mum for a while before driving back to Skipton to visit Aldi again; this time we had a more serious shop but still only enough to keep to 20 of us going on Saturday.  As it was Aldi there were items we couldn’t get so we then paid a visit to Morrisons to get those. 

A day’s worth of food for 20 people in Aldi 😊

We then went back to Gargrave to unload everything at my parents’ house and stopped on the way to pick up the bolognaise sauce from the boat.  We must have looked a bit strange, waiting to cross the A65 holding a large saucepan.  If you're wondering why we left everything at my parents then consider the space required and where would we find that on our boat?

It was then a quick visit to see my Dad just up the road and then home again.  It was a hot and sultry end to the day just like it had been every day in June and most of July when the hatches and doors were left open all evening.

When we were home, Karen baked a couple of fruit cakes for the weekend and I made sure all the plants were well watered.

Other than the hire boat that we had to wait for at the water point, the only other boats on the move all day were the six day boats hired out by the boatyard in Skipton.  I've always thought day boats must be a nice little earner for boatyards but when you consider the overheads the maintenance must be the same as on normal narrowboats.  In fact it's probably higher as they are in constant use and many of them get rather hammered, especially when hired out by hen and stag parties!