Thursday 31st March
6 months after my last post here I am again! A lot has happened since I last wrote, here is a brief precis lest I bore you to death.
At the beginning of October we went down to London to attend Ken’s cousin Trevor’s retirement do. I would like to say this event passed off without incident but unfortunately himself managed to fall off the path and down a culvert on the way back to the hotel!
I know what you’re thinking but no this didn’t have anything to do with the amount of alcoholic beverage he had consumed it was just an accident.
The day after the retirement do we travelled to Stansted and the next day flew to Lanzarote. We had a lovely holiday despite the fact that Ken’s leg got an infection in and swelled alarmingly. As a consequence of this he had to go to the Spanish doctor who prescribed very strong antibiotics. These did the trick with the infection but made him rather ill in the process. Suffice to say he was glad to get back home!
In November we decided to have a few days in Blackpool as I had never been before. We went for the illuminations and did eventually manage to see them. When we arrived the fog was so thick that we couldn’t even see the beach across the road from the hotel! The next day, even while standing at the foot of the tower we were unable to see the top! By the last day the fog had lifted and the ensuing rain had stopped so we did manage to do a bit of sightseeing.
Unfortunately the Pleasure Beach was shut so I was unable to go on that big roller coaster which was a shame. We did have a nice tram trip to Fleetwood and to see the lights. We also had two lots of fish and chips, one at Harry Ramsden’s and one in a cheap cafe in a back street. Both were excellent.
The beginning of December saw us spending a week in Hunstanton. The town is a bit run down but we had good accommodation. The weather was a bit changeable but we managed some nice sightseeing trips while we were there including a lovely boat trip round Blakeney Point to see the seals. This is something which we had never done before despite numerous visits to North Norfolk.
We spent Christmas and New Year staying in Bungay this year, the first time we have been home for Christmas since we got the boat.
In February we went to Cornwall for a week over my birthday. The weather was a bit grim apart from 3 fabulous days in the middle of the week but we did a lot of sightseeing and had a lovely time. It was so good in fact that we are returning to Cornwall again at the end of September to stay somewhere we spotted while we were there this time.
Our 6 month stay in the marina hasn’t been all holiday making though, we have done loads of work on the boat and have got more planned. I won’t bore you with the details.
So here we are now at the end of March and we are getting ready for this year’s cruise. Our current plan is to go down the Oxford and the Thames to Lechlade then go down to the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal.
Today we have come out of the marina and as the river is in flood due to last weekend’s heavy rain are moored in the cut. This will serve as a test for the batteries etc before we eventually go off cruising.
We have had our first (near) disaster already. We returned from the shops (pub) this afternoon to find one of our go kart tyre fenders missing. Had it been stolen? No, a poke about down the side of the boat with the boat hook soon retrieved it and we decided I hadn’t tied it on well enough when we moored up and it had fallen off. Fortunately go kart fenders don’t float so it just sank to the bottom and was easy to get back.
First things first though, we are having a load of work done at Kingfisher Boats on the Erewash canal next week, while we take Peter to Portsmouth again. If the river ever goes down that is!
