Well, I have been remiss lately and haven’t written anything for ages! Today we have travelled 5 miles and 2 locks from Trent Lock (where we spent last night) to Beeston and are moored at Canalside.
In the interim period since I last wrote Tim and Emily came on Tuesday 25th Aug and as I predicted it pissed down most of the time and was pretty cold. However we still managed to sit outside the pub at Trent Lock with Bruce while we had lunch. We also took him for a long walk along the river bank in the afternoon. We had a lovely meal in The Trent Lock in the evening before Tim and Emily went off to a hotel.
Bruce stayed with us Tuesday night and spent most of it on the bed with us! Tim and Emily took him home Wednesday afternoon after another long riverside walk. It was nice to see them all.
Thursday 27th Aug we returned to Sawley and put the boat in the marina (where we have a year’s moorings now) in preparation for our trip to Southampton and Portsmouth.
Friday 28ty Aug we went to Southampton and spent a couple of days seeing family and also going to St Mary’s to see Norwich put up a rather dismal performance against Southampton on the Sunday! The trip across on the Hythe Ferry was the highlight of that particular day anyway!
Bank holiday Monday (31st Aug) we left Southampton and went off to Portsmouth to meet Peter. Our train fell foul of the rail strike but we easily caught another one and actually arrived in Portsmouth almost before we had left Southampton!
We had a very pleasant few days in Portsmouth staying in The Royal Maritime Club, visiting the Historic Dockyard and the Submarine museum, having a harbour tour, visiting Spice Island, going up the Spinnaker and having a flying visit to Shanklin on the Isle of Wight.
We returned to Sawley on Friday 4th Sept and on the Sunday we purchased our car which we have affectionately christened Brian, after the snail in The Magic Roundabout, on account of the fact that he is rather slow! Nought to Sixty in about 2 days we reckon, bless.
We decided to do a test run in Brian so on the Wednesday (9th Sept) we went to Suffolk and spent a couple of days with Mum and Dave. The weather was lovely and we had a few nice trips to Southwold (for fish), Aldeburgh (walk and seafood) and Great Yarmouth (walk down Regent’s Rd, seafood, chips and mushy peas off the market).
Sat 12th Sept we once again returned to Sawley marina and decided to stay there until Thurs 17th because the forecast was bad. As it turned out this was unnecessary because the forecast was totally wrong!
Anyway, Thursday we went down to Trent Lock where we were Billy no Mates on the pontoon which is highly unusual. And now we are at Beeston. After mooring up we walked in to town for a paper and some fresh parsley and to check out how long it would take to get to the bus stop for tomorrow when we want to go into Nottingham to see the football.
When we got back we sat outside the Marina Bar in the sun. The sky turned really black but it never rained until much later which was good.
Tomorrow we are going to Nottingham on the bus to watch football as I have said.
