A trip!

The week before last He went on a trip with some friends. One of them is standing in an election to be a Vice President of a national organisation which involved him having to visit eight different places in four days in order to do some campaigning. He offered to go along to help with the driving.

The first day of the trip took term to London at lunchtime and then on to Devon for an evening meeting. The second day was quite a bit shorter visiting mid-Wales and Shropshire. Day three was Lancashire ( see my previous post on Garstang and the Lancaster canal) and Yorkshire and the final day was Suffolk and Rutland. All in all they covered 1200 miles and were pretty tired when they got back but had a good time.

On the trip they found an especially good B&B which He asked me to mention as it comes with an enormous recommendation if you ever need to stay in the Telford area. The Old Rectory of St James was nothing short of brilliant; a fantastic welcome from the hosts, beautifully decorated and furnished rooms and the best breakfast ever! It really was something special.

http://theoldrectoryofstjames.co.uk

Garstang - The Lancaster Canal

Last week He went away on a trip. I’ll tell you more about that in another post.

On the trip He visited Garstang in Lancashire which is on the Lancaster Canal. He went for a short walk along the towpath and took these pictures.

A night on the boat and thermostatic plugs.

He spent Friday night on the boat although he said He didn’t sleep very well. It was evidently very windy, he wasn’t feeling very well and it took him a while to fall asleep. The real issue was at about 3am when there was a loud clattering sound on the roof at the front of the boat. He went to investigate and found that the coolie hat which stops the rain coming down the chimney had blown off and, restrained by a length or wire, was rolling around noisily. He had to get up and go outside to sort it out.

With the mild winter we haven’t needed to heat the boat much although after the split pipes of last winter he’s invested in some thermostatic switches so that the heaters don’t come on until the temperature falls below a given figure. They were quite expensive (£20 ish) but hopefully worth it and cheaper than all the plumbing supplies he had to buy last year!

Ringing in the New Year

Both He and She are church bell ringers – campanologists to those in the know.

They used to ring quite a lot but progressively rang less and less once children arrived. An interesting aside is that it was as a result of some friends who were bell ringers suggesting a bell ringing holiday by narrowboat that got them interested in the inland waterways and narrowboats. That was more than 20 years ago (long before my time) but evidently they had two enjoyable holidays one on the River Soar and the other on the Grand Union in Northamptonshire cruising from village to village and ringing the church bells.

Anyway they saw in the New Year 2012 in a church tower in rural Lincolnshire. Following an enjoyable meal with friends they went up the tower just before midnight when one of the ringers tolled the tenor bell (that’s the biggest one) at midnight and then everyone else joined it. Champagne followed ( or should it be flowed?) so quite civilised really!

On New Year’s day they visited the boat to check that all was well.