It was nice to get to the boat over the weekend and take it out for a night on the cut. Sad in not having Leia with us of course. We've owner Percy for nearly 10 years now and she has been on every trip on the boat.
We rocked up at the marina mid day Saturday in two cars as we had separate plans for Monday. So our cruise was limited in that respect but also if we had more time we were very limited by closures due in the main to water shortages. Basically going north was only possible to Stone as the Caldon, Macclesfield Cheshire flight and Peak Forest canals were all closed due to lack of water.
I caught an interview with the CEO of C&RT Richard Parry who was citing the age and disrepair of the 200 year old system ....like a considerable number of boaters we see the investment (sic) in signage, vehicles towpath surfaces where as we also see the lack of vegetation control especially waterside both sides now plus lack or planned preventative and long term maintenance left in favour of reactive maintenance - which from a point of experience of such is a sure way to fail in both service provision and infrastructure reliability. If you don't plan maintenance, if you don't look after your assets they fail and then all money goes into much more expensive reactive ( emergency) maintenance.
Ok rant over, We had the first might aboard as we visited our grandsons in the afternoon. It gives us so much pleasure to see how much love there is in this little family unit.
On Sunday morning we turned north out of the marina knowing it would be much quieter that way and so it was. We're are not big fans of marina boating, it's not the easiest berth or marina entrance to get into or out of ... needs must for now.
Immediately we saw another reason to be looking for new moorings ....
Thats the other side of the HS2 works for the large bridge that is going to run pretty much over the wooded area of the marina. There is works the other side of the A51 also. It's a pincer movement of noise dust and disruption that is only ever going to get worse for the next couple of years. Really sad for the marina as its a very rural quiet place - thats its selling point ! Amongst other options we are on the waiting list at Stone who have a 25 boat list at the moment .... I wonder how many Great Haywood moorers are on that list? I still prefer an on line mooring and we have a couple of options in the background there.....
We were headed for the other side of Weston lock but it started to rain so we winded and moored at Ingestre. We've moored here before, a bit of road noise but feels very remote and rural.
Of course the rain stopped so we walked to Weston for a beer in the pub and brought honey from the bee keeper, a bag of cooking apples and a bag of cherry tomatoes from one house stall and half a dozen eggs from another house.... we did some foraging on the way back picking blackberries and elderberries. Rachel made elderberry and apple compote for desert that evening, with some natural Greek yoghurt it was lovely.
I finished the evening off with some pole fishing taking a few nice Roach and Bream on sweetcorn.
Monday saw us heading back early as Rachel needed to be in Derby by 11.
No comments:
Post a Comment