Sorry I’ve not blogged for a week, I’ve been too busy socialising and having a great time!
We got a lovely mooring at Fradley on Friday lunchtime, just a couple of minutes from the Swan.
The bird watchers hide across the lake
‘Jemima Puddleduck’
On our way back to the boat we spotted this – now that’s a motor-bike that I could be a passenger on!
We had our Sunday lunch in the Swan as well as we waited for Karen and Ian on ‘Serenity’ to arrive, which they duly did at about 3.30. Of course, we all had to go back to the pub to celebrate meeting up.
On Monday morning we set off towards Great Hayward, but had to stop at the ‘Plum Pudding’ for a pasta lunch
Karen driving ‘Serenity’ (boatwoman extraordinaire!)
The ‘twins’ outside the Plum Pudding
Lotsa loos at Armitage Shanks!
We moored up for the night near Colwich. It was such a lovely evening that we got the barbecue out, and sat out on the bank until well after 10’oclock
Tuesday morning was one of those ‘mist on the water’ mornings – I’ve been waiting ages to take one of these photos, but never been up early enough before. We got to Great Hayward about lunchtime and went to the Farm Shop, and then continued on to Weston On Trent where we moored for the night. Karen cooked us a lovely meal and we staggered back to boat in pouring rain.
Wednesday lunchtime saw us at Stone, so we had a wander around and did a bit of shopping at Morrison's – we were both running short of cider and beer by this time! We stayed the night there as we had a good mooring spot and didn’t want to struggle later on. The Trent and Mersey is very busy at the moment due to the stoppage on the Shroppie. We had to queue for more than an hour on Wednesday morning for Sandon lock
This morning we had a slow journey to Barlaston to meet Ali and Neil from Beacon who came to sort out our problem with the pressure relief valve on the calorifier. They found out what the problem was – the company who supplied the calorifier had reduced the pressure that the valve goes off at without telling anyone, and we have a stronger than usual water pump, which coincidentally delivers water at the same pressure! This was why the valve sometimes went off and sometimes didn’t! Anyway, the valve has now been changed to a higher pressure one and hopefully this will sort out the problem.
Tomorrow, we will make a run through Stoke and Hanley onto the Caldon and get far enough up it to moor safely. Probably no more blogs until we have parted company with Karen and Ian, who sadly will have to turn around after the weekend and head back to their base at Kegworth on the Soar as they have to go back to work! Never mind Karen, not long now until your ‘two year odyssey’ – only the winter to get through and then you can be away.
We encountered two more bloggers today – Jo and Keith on nb Hadar, and nb Indigo Dream - (sorry, can’t remember your names) Sorry we couldn’t stop but we were late for our meeting with Ali and Neil. Hope to meet up again sometime and have a proper chat. Of course the camera was inside the boat so no photos. We also spotted nb Phyllis May, Terry Darlington of ‘Narrow Dog’ fame’s boat, moored at Roger Fuller’s yard in Stone.
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