Tuesday 4th October
We have had a really productive day today, taking advantage of the last reasonable day weatherwise, staying at Coole Pilate for the morning and cleaning the roof, hurrah! This was, as I had intimated, a long overdue and arduous task. We got everything off the roof and I got up there with my new scrubby broom. We really shouldn’t leave it so long between cleanings, I think I said that in April too! However, it’s done now and doesn’t look too bad although it does need painting, a job which we hope to be able to do sometime in the winter, weather permitting.
While I was on the roof Ken rubbed down and painted the parasol stand, which we use for the aerial/satellite dish pole, with hammerite, another overdue task. After the roof I did the bank side of the boat as well as I had made rather a mess of it chucking water on the roof! The other side will have to wait until we are moored the right way round.
After all this activity we moved from Coole Pilate to the aqueduct at Audlem and took George to the Shroppie Fly. It is quite a walk for him but he was really good and did it in about 20 minutes. There were a few dogs at the pub, as there usually are but we managed to sit apart from them.
Meanwhile B and B also taking advantage of the nice weather had gone off to do the locks. We have a lot more time to get back than they do so we have decided to go our separate ways now. We had a phone call from them later when they got to Adderley to say that they will be travelling even quicker than they anticipated now because on top of their battery problems their inverter has packed up! This means they have to get to Penkridge sooner rather than later to get a new one from Midland Chandlers. What a pain, we know what that is like because our inverter packed up when we were doing the Leicester Ring and we had to travel from Fleckney to Thurmaston in one day to get back to the boat yard. Hope they get it sorted out soon.
This evening we went back to the pub and had Shroppie Fly burgers, delicious! By the time we got back the wind had really got up so we may not be doing the locks tomorrow!
