Pootling around

For The last few weekends we've made it away from home on a Thursday after I've finished work.  Having prepared a meal to re-heat from the day before, it's great to be on the boat, unpacked and eating our evening meal, giving me the feeling we've made the most of our get-away.

The weather has also been great, and we have been fortunate to be out of the marina in some glorious sunshine.

The bank holiday weekend saw us making the most of the sunshine and a good mooring at Shackerstone.  This enabled me to get on with touching up the paintwork along one side of the boat.  I've been really apprehensive about tackling this, but it's not turned out too bad at all.  I'd been researching some paint makes to understand how I could get a paint that would be a match for our awlcraft 2000 two pack as this is only something that can be sprayed, I've ended up getting an epifanes custom colour, this really does match our original paint and was really easy to apply, I feel confident in tackling the other side, when we have the time to do it.

This past weekend saw us arrive again on Thursday early evening, giving us time to get out of the marina and motor down to Stoke Golding, having made tea again before we came away the smell of cottage pie warming through followed us along the canal. We walked to the Dog and Hedgehog for evening drinks on Friday, and decided to book for lunch on Saturday, the staff are always very attentive, and we had some good banter from the bar staff.

Saturday afternoon we headed back to the marina, rain was forecast for the evening and as we were going to a local May ball we didn't fancy getting drenched before the event, instead we drove, which turned out to be a good plan as within an hour of our return the rain started. 

We're now back home and planning for this weekend, we'll be welcoming a special guest who is responsible for our boating adventures.  We'll also be thinking about the week after as I have some leave booked, we will be getting off the Ashby canal for a while, and that will involve some locks, that'll be the first since last October.

Space for ballgowns required!

Winterising and seeing how things have faired over winter.  We were last on the boat on 10 December, Martin had been busy lagging many of the water pipes to help protect as far as possible against any hard frosts.

The last engagement of this year was to the local Christmas dance, avid dancers (ballroom, latin and sequence) with varying degrees of execution we've had fun going along to a very welcoming bunch at one of the local village halls. So when you have a boat built you normally don't allow for ballgowns to go in your wardrobe, hmm not me!

On the Sunday morning we woke early (5 ish) I looked outside to see what the conditions were - no sign of the forecast snow yet, at 7 am it was a different story, it was leave now or get stuck for a few days, not really an option that was open to us.

After clearing the car a few times in the space of half an hour the car was loaded and we were making our way out of the marina home, 4 - 5 inches of snow by now made the trip the longest so far.  One lane of just passable motorway does not make for quick travelling, but sticking to following lorries proved to be the best policy, although Martin's stop at Hopwood Park Services could have been a different story (I'm packing proper grippy outdoor shoes for him next time, as I ended up being the one to push the car out of the car park and onto the service road)

This weekend saw us back at the boat, fingers crossed everything would be ok and certainly dry when the water was turned back on, it was, should we have doubted it? anyway all the preparation to winterise was well worth it, this year we may well do it a bit earlier, weather and forecast dependant I think.

So exactly 3 months from when we were here last, I went for a 6 mile walk while Martin pottered, we had a good bit of snoozing and on Saturday night we were again at a dance, greeted like long lost friends, the weekend has started our boating season, and oh have we missed it, it's good to be boating again.