On the Saturday
night they were exceptionally apologetic and explained that they were trying to
take photos of themselves pretending to drive a boat – I’m not sure how the pictures would have come out in the pitch black. As
we were going to Yorkshire for four days, we were a bit concerned about leaving
the boat where it was even though we had left it in the same position for three
weeks over the Christmas period without any issues.
With this
in mind, on Monday, we moved the boat over to the pontoons and breasted up
against Liz’s boat. Being on the
pontoons gives the added security of being locked and gated, although, determined
and agile people could easily jump the gap into the secure area.
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| Karen doing a different sort of locking up as we left for Yorkshire on Tuesday morning |
After
moving the boat, it was a quick trip to the vets in town for Buddy’s second
titre test. We have to leave it 30 days
from the rabies injection before being able to have the test. All the signs are that he should pass this time,
but we still have no idea what we will do if he fails until we know whether or
not (or how) we’re leaving the EU at the end of March.
We hadn’t
been up to Yorkshire to see my parents since before Christmas, so it was good
to spend time with them during the week.
Mum is more confident since her falls and, although, she stays in her
room she is talking about being able to go downstairs for meals again soon,
which is positive news. Dad, who was
given a week or two to live a year ago, is as mentally strong as ever and we enjoyed
hearing him recounting stories of his youth whenever we visited (he said he enjoyed recounting them too). He has also
been able to visit Mum a couple of times recently thanks to a local group of
volunteers who transport those without mobility to visit loved ones etc.
There had obviously
been a lot of rain recently as we couldn’t take our normal walk into my parent’s
village across the stepping stones.
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| No way over the River Aire into Gargrave |
On
Wednesday we spent a lot of the day in Harrogate at the newly refurbished
Turkish baths, one of only a handful of Victorian baths still left in the
country. After a guided tour, two hours
in the baths, thirty minutes in the spa, lunch we then had a full body massages
for an hour. Yes, we were relaxed 😁
These
pictures hopefully show the splendid decoration of the brickwork and tiling in
the baths
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| The original changing rooms |
 |
| The cooling down room |
 |
| A treatment room |
 |
| Welcome plunge pool we used after each visit to the steam or hot rooms |
 |
| One of the hot rooms |
We felt
well and truly relaxed for the rest of the day and it was all we could do to walk
around the corner and have a cream tea at Betty’s tea rooms…
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| …with a view over one of Harrogate’s many green spaces |
I can’t
move on from talking about Harrogate without mentioning a lucky find. We had parked out of the centre and to get to
the baths had to cross on a high-level walkway across the railway station. Looking down at the platform we caught a
glimpse of a pillar box. We expected it
to be Victorian as most boxes on stations are still the originals but we have only
come across wall boxes before so this would be a first.
After a
bit of faffing around and cajoling the station staff we managed to get onto the
platform without a ticket and found that the box was indeed Victorian with the
classic curved VR cypher found on pillar boxes.
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| Victorian pillar box in Harrogate station |
We stayed
in Yorkshire until Friday and, after a final visit to my parents, set off home before
we got caught in the Friday evening traffic.
We arrived back at Aylesbury basin just before darkness and, as expected,
the boat was safe and well, if a little cold.
Ours was the only non-permanet boat left as the others had all left
whilst we had been away.
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| The trip boat, Woody’s boat, Liz’s boat and then us |
Saturday
saw us heading off for Reading on yet another long car journey. We were picking Jake and Lewis up on our way
to see the Southampton-Cardiff game. On
the way we dropped Buddy off in Wokingham as our friend Ali had offered to look
after him for the day. We were rather
hoping for an easy win, especially as Lewis is a Cardiff supporter. We were sadly disappointed even though we had
most of the possession and were clearly the better team, as no player seemed to
want to try and score.
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| Fully expectant before the kick off |
I did move
the boat back to the side after breakfast as we felt a bit guilty breasted up
to Liz’s boat, especially as she and Colin were spending the weekend on it. As I have my marine radio certificate exam on
Tuesday, I also spent a few hours or so doing some revision.
One reason
we had planned on moving out of the basin on Sunday was to get up to the Grand
Union mainline ready for when Jules and Richard come through on their fuel boat
on Monday. As we will now miss them, it
looks like we’ll be making trips to a local coal merchants and to find a garage
that sells red diesel.
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