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| We saw our first comma of the year on Monday (look at the right-hand picture to see why it’s called a comma) |
My middle
son, Steve, was in the area for business on Friday so popped in for lunch and
help answer a few of my electrical questions.
It won’t be so easy for him to come and see us soon, so we’ll be on our
own if we have any electrical problems and I wanted to make sure I’m more clued
up.
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| Steve checking he can come on board |
Later in
the afternoon Lauren (my middle daughter) and her husband, Lewis, arrived for
the weekend. It was Lewis’s first time
on a narrowboat, let alone sleeping on it for a couple of nights. He coped really well apart from being a bit
phased by the rolling as many people are when experiencing boats for the first
time.
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| Waking Lauren & Lewis up on Saturday morning |
We had a
good walk around the Tring reservoirs and parts of the Wendover and Aylesbury
arms on Saturday morning. It was an
unseasonal day again and we saw about ten brimstones but, surprisingly, no
other spring butterflies out of hibernation early.
We ended
up at the Red Lion and watched the two six nations matches. Karen arrived back from visiting Jo in
Edinburgh soon after the second kick off and managed to squeeze into the packed
room. To give the locals their due, a bunch
of them shook Lewis’s hand (he’s Welsh) after the England game.
Lauren
& Lewis left on Sunday morning and Colin popped around to fit the shelving
units he has made for us.
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| Karen immediately filled one of the units |
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| The other two units either side of the radiator |
The nearer
one will take a bit longer to fill as we want to get some photo frames and
other knick-knacks. Karen’s plan for the
one by the kitchen is to fill it with storage jars thus giving us more room in
the kitchen cupboards.
On Monday
morning the brimstones were out from about nine o’clock and we also saw our
first comma of the year. The photos at
the top were taken of commas we saw last year.
The comma is another butterfly that hibernates as an adult and emerges
in the spring as soon as the weather starts warming up. Amazingly eight different species of
butterfly have been seen across the UK this year already.
Ann came
over for lunch and, after she left, Karen and I went for a cruise.
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| Tee-shirt weather on our Monday cruise |
I say a
cruise, but we were only off to get water before we start heading for
Northampton. I know we filled up less
than a week ago, but water soon gets used up when visitors stay.
We had to
head north out of Marsworth, down a lock, spin around, come back up the lock, return
through Marsworth, spin around again at the junction with the Aylesbury arm
just to get to the water point. By the
time we had moored up near where we started from, three hours had disappeared!
Another
reason we wanted to have a little cruise was to practise using a boathook to
attach our new looped lines over lock side bollards. This is something we will
have to do a lot in France but not over here.
The operation only needs to be done when locking up (going uphill) in
wide locks and we realised over the weekend that we won’t be going uphill in quiet,
wide locks before we leave unless we engineer the situation. By going down a
lock and coming back up again meant we could practise.
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| Karen getting ready |
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| Next the angling |
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| Finally pulling the hook away leaving the loop over the bollard |
Another
reason the afternoon cruise took three hours was that Dave on Hyperion arrived
at the waterpoint just before us and the wait, and our subsequent fill, was
quite lengthy due to the low water pressure.
Before
finishing this entry, I must mention that Steve saw a Camberwell beauty in
Sussex on Saturday. These are very rare
migrants to the UK, and it does rather make us wonder what sort of butterfly
year this will be, especially as there have been dozens of early reports of
painted ladies making there way over here from North Africa already.
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| Sunrise at our new mooring at Marsworth |
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