Overwater to Wrenbury
Tuesday 7th May (cont)
Now then, after imparting the info about those thieving
boaters – yes, even though living on a boat is supposed to be cheaper, we do
have our share of villains – I’ll continue with the mundane stuff.
We left Audlem on Sunday afternoon, as you are aware and,
since we didn’t want to try mooring up at Nantwich on a Bank Holiday, we
decided to stay here at Overwater for two days.
From here to Audlem is about 1½ miles walk along the towpath
and, since it was such a lovely morning, we decided to take a walk into town,
for a newspaper and anything else that took our fancy. The round trip took
about 1½ hours and, contrary to expectations, my legs didn’t suffer for it.
Normally after such a walk, I can expect my legs to give me grief later in the
evening, but all was well this time.
For the rest of the day we took it easy, although Wifey did
have a stab at cleaning our brass tunnel light, with some considerable degree
of success. I had intended to sand down some rust patches on the stern deck
but, after that walk and because it was such a great day, I took the easy way
out and rested up for the rest of the day.
This is a pretty isolated spot and we only had one
neighbour, and he was quite a distance away from us, so we let the engine run
longer than usual, just so that we could watch a later programme. Vicious! With
Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi, this gay comedy is well worth a watch.
Ordinarily I wouldn’t consider watching anything of this nature – old
fashioned, I guess – but these two brilliant actors really do show their comic
sides. With Francis de la Tour and an additional foil to their wit, along with
the unassuming Ash, this is a joy to watch. Hopefully we’ll always be in a good
enough signal area to watch further episodes.
Wednesday 8th May
There was I, thinking we were in for a lengthy period of
sunshine when, overnight it rained. We even let the fire go out but, it’s now
pretty windy and it’s chilly in the boat, so I’ve had to relight the fire.
Still, we have at least had some sunshine, even if it did only last a few days.
Yesterday we moved along to Nantwich and we will take the
bus into town this morning. If we get no more rain today and if that wind
drops, we’ll move along to the Llangollen canal, which will mean the four locks
at Hurleston.
Our wee pooch has recently taken it upon herself to pee on
the carpet. She is getting on a bit but, since she manages to go up to 10 hours
overnight without doing so, I’m of the opinion that she’s becoming lazy. Either
that or she simply hates being manhandled when we take her out. Being somewhat
weak in the legs now, we have to lift her up the back stairs and then lift her
back down again.
She’s so sneaky about it too. If we’re sitting at the dinette,
she holds it in, although she does let us know when she wants to go out.
However, if we’re sitting in our armchairs, and out of sight of the galley,
she’ll pee on the rug by the cupboard there.
I suppose we should be grateful that she only pees!
Thursday 9th May
We had a pretty good day yesterday, all things considered.
Although a wee bit windy in the morning, we decided to walk into Nantwich
early, rather than wait for the bus. The bus means waiting until 9.30 before we
can use our passes, whereas walking only takes about 20 minutes. In any case we
were hoping the weather would stay dry for us, so that we could push on to the
Llangollen. Sadly rain marred much of the day, so that was out.
We spent the rest of Wednesday simply chilling out but, with
nothing better to do, we walked down to the chandlery and bought some new
cratch cover retaining bungee cords. These are short, looped cords with a
plastic lump at one end and are threaded through two holes at each side of the
cover and are then used to strap the cover back when closed. They stop it
flapping in the wind, don’t you know?
I did say ‘all things considered’ when mentioning yesterday.
This is because our Rusty was not her usual buoyant self and spent most of the
day mooching about or sleeping. She really seemed under the weather. This
culminated in a bout of sickness at 2am, with Wifey taking her out for a walk,
where she threw up again. She eventually settled down on her bed; Rusty, that
is; and she’s still on her bed as I type.
As for me, well, since I was now wide awake, I made myself a
cuppa and got down to some painting of those back panels, returning to bed at
3am.
Yesterday evening, before all this happened, the weather
calmed down, but it was then too late to move on and, as I would expect, it is
now windy and raining. However, having spent our 48 hours here, we’ll have to
move on this morning, bad weather or no.
Friday 10th May
Yesterday saw us spending another day at Nantwich, due to
high winds and rain, something we had no wish to repeat today. So, having taken
pooch out at 5.45 this morning, Wifey got up much earlier than usual and, after
a quick cup of tea, we set off at 6.15 and, after passing through the four
Hurleston locks, we had moored up at Burland by 9.45 and then had breakfast.
There’s a lot to be said for an early start.
We’ll probably stay here tonight and move on to Wrenbury
tomorrow morning.
Saturday 12th May
As predicted, we left Burland yesterday morning and took it
nice and easy up to Wrenbury, where there is a hire boat company, two pubs and
a small general store.
We arrived at about 10.30, having covered 4 miles and 5
locks in 2 hours and, just as we finished tying the boat up, down came the
rain. Indeed, later in the day we had a mighty blast of hailstones, thunder and
lightning or, as our European partners would say, ‘donner und blitzen’. Of
course that may not be the correct spelling, but I know a man who will correct
me if I’m wrong!
We took a walk up to the chandlery that is part of the boat
hire company but, since they didn’t have the rope we have been looking for, we
came away with another of those small ‘Favourite’ recipe books, of which we now
have 21. Each book, which is about A6 in size, concentrates on a different
theme, such as Boating, Cakes, Stews, and Regional and, within the pages are
black and white depictions of rural paintings. We buy one of these at most of
the shops that sell them and they range in price from about £1.50 to £1.99.
We’re getting up quite a collection of them now.
Lunchtime today, of course, will see us in one of the local
pubs. Well, it would be rude not to, wouldn’t it? It is Sunday after all.
Monday 13th May
Today should have been Friday, it really should.
Yesterday, when I switched on the laptop and due to the
earlier crash, up came a black screen telling me that Check Disc was about to
check for errors. Not wishing to sit there all morning waiting for it to do so,
I pressed Enter and went to Windows start up.
This morning the darn thing did it again but, as I didn’t
have much to do on the laptop anyway, I let it continue checking, with the
following result:-
As you all know by now, I have a programme called Typeitin
on this machine, which carries all the websites and email addresses I need, so
that instead of having to type the address into the address bar, I simply open
the necessary group and click on the name I want, at which point that address
will appear in the address bar. This programme had all information removed
during the Check Disc process. I now have the dubious task of re-entering all those
groups and addresses, so, if you don’t receive any emails from me for a few
days, it’s because I’m rather busy re-entering all that info.
Ye gods and little fishes, why that programme? I’ve actually
made out all the groups but have yet to enter all the addresses and, on
previous occasions when I’ve had to do this, I’ve also had to re-register the
programme, and that can be a nightmare.
Other than that wee problem, everything is fine and dandy
and we’ll be moving along today, possibly to Grindley Brook, but that’s
assuming the weather holds. Right now it’s bright and sunny!
Of course that could change before we leave here and, on
that happy note I’ll post.
Have a good week folks.
Dave, Sheila and Rusty.
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