Sunday 16th June
We were woken early this morning by the friendly goose remonstrating loudly with one of it’s mates! Ordinarily this wouldn’t have been a problem but – a) We didn’t need to be up and about today and b) we went to bed rather late last night. This was because we both got engrossed in the Mac Tavish Cup Final on BBC Alba.
What on earth is that? I hear you cry. Well, it is a shinty competition played, not surprisingly, in Scotland. We do not really know the rules of Shinty and as most of the commentary was in Gaelic we didn’t actually have much idea of what was going on either. It became a challenge to work it out. We decided you could pretty much do what you liked with regard to hitting the ball and the opponents too!
The match was drawn 1-1 and being a final went to extra time and subsequently penalties, resulting in us not getting to bed until nearly 1 am because we just had to find out who would win!
After a lazy morning doing not much, apart from Ken preparing the veg etc for tonight’s roast dinner, we set off for our walk up the Hatton flight of locks. It took us 45 minutes to get to The Hatton Arms which is actually 4 locks from the top but up a steep hill from the canal anyway.We did stop for a brief chat with the couple on Peruvian Skies who we have been stalking (or them us) ever since Hawkesbury in March! We also saw a chap feeding some ducks at one of the locks and the female one actually got on his lap to get the bread!
We managed to arrive at the pub at exactly 12 pm as is our wont! We sat outside on the balcony and surveyed the lovely view (see photos) which would have been enhanced by the appearance of some sunshine but you can’t have everything. The wind got up and it was pretty chilly sitting outside after we had cooled down from our walk but as all the tables in the pub were booked by this time we had to grin and bear it.
On the way back down ‘duck man’ was still sitting at the lock and he engaged us in conversation about ducks and ducklings then totally out of the blue tried to tap us up for some money! He started by asking us to get him a sandwich from the nearby garage, he even said he wanted egg mayonnaise! Ken was somewhat taken aback and it took a while for us to suss him out. Ken said he wasn’t going to do that so this chap said he would get it himself but wanted Ken to give him the money.
We left quickly and realised that when we had come up the chap had been feeding his last sandwich to the ducks and he was having a fag so he can’t be hard up, bloody cheek!
Tomorrow I really have to start on the European washing mountain and we have someone coming to size up our gas job, hopefully he will be more reliable than the last one!
