Thursday 19 June 2008

Leia on the water at last

Leia has had her first visit and her first 'holiday' on the boat. She will be a great boat dog for sure. Above and below are shots from her first trip from our mooring to wind in Alrewas prior to our weekend away up to Great Heywood - see below for that.




  • She does not like the water
  • She likes other dogs
  • She likes people
  • She does fart a lot which is a bad thing in enclosed spaces - however I can't imaging five farting greyhounds in a narrowboat is nice !

After winding the boat last Tuesday we set off Friday lunchtime for one of the best weekend cruises we have had on any canal boat. We cruised up to Bridge 69 (Taft Bridge) on the T&M and enjoyed a very remote and quite night on the boat - there was plenty of good space for Leia to enjoy and plenty of things to smell and listen to (she has very big ears !)

On the Saturday we took her into Rugely for a good 4 mile walk - she was a hit in the town. After some lunch we set off for a quick hop to GreatHeywood - below the metal bridge and has this million pound view for the rest of the day.....

We have never spoken to so many people whilst out boating due to Leia, - normally we do a few hi's and hello's but these were long conversations - very sociable.

At the end of the day she was done in.......

I even took the opportunity of a night shot - Granny has whetted my appetite !

Andrew - any comments?

We took a cruise up to Weston on the Sunday to charge the batteries up. I do like this bit of canal. It was a lot busier on Sunday but all very friendly.

Monday saw us come back with a nice early 7am start - the canals are sooooo nice at this time in the morning, especially if it is dry and sunny which it was.

It was so nice we stopped just after the turn at Woodend lock and had food on the towpath and then some more fishing - canal boating is fantastic!

Our next trip out is with our friends from Scotland who will be bringing two collies down - so we might have three farting dogs to compete with Dogsontour

Does Leia get me enrolled into the dog bloggers roll call them??

Sunday 1 June 2008

Waterlily comes home - not quite

So Waterlily was ours - see the Whilton post as this is the next stage in the story.

We dropped a car off at Fradley earlier in the week and set off on Friday 20th July and it was raining and it just kept raining. We stopped for Fuel on route and when we left the petrol station the road was actually flooded - in hindsight we only just made it through that stretch of flood water - the water was actually coming up from the grates !

The country - especially the West Midlands was getting a real downpour - we were lucky, some suffered significant problems

What really peed me off about Whilton was the lack of ceremony when we collected the keys. They just handed the folder of supporting documents got my signature and handed me the keys and told me where Waterlily was . By any ones standards the amount I paid was a lot - certainly garages passing new cars to new owners do it with a bit more flair. A bottle of wine and a card or flowers would have been nice - even to be escorted to the boat and best wishes given would have been better. Hey ho, no problem as we had Waterlily.

We loaded her in the wet, checked the diesel (full) and turned on what systems we could find - water, gas electric etc.

I reversed her out of her temp berth and got her onto the main line perfectly, a fine start to our ownership of her.

The water was flooding over the top gates of the locks and there was water everywhere - quite dangerous in fact. It was so bad we stopped just below the Buckby top lock and retired to the New Inn for food.

Saturday was better with no rain - just rumours of a collapse of Brauton Tunnel - our way home to Fradley I scouted the moorings above the top lock and found one right at the end by the BW base. So we moved up and did some checking of the situation. it turned out that the tunnel was OK but there was a significant mud slide on the Braunston end and it would not be until the start of the next week before engineers could even assess the damage.

we did consider the leicester ring option but the Soar was up as was the Trent - both part of this route home.

We were limited by time so a reluctant decision was taken to leave waterlily and reverse the planning - frustrating, but all0wed us to plan a quick return. We wanted our boat on our mooring !

Nev

Wales

We have been to visit relatives in North Wales and took Leia who certainly enjoyed her first trip to the sea side.


This photo is from my phone - is has a panorama mode - taken on Conway heights with Rachel and her dad looking over the Conway valley to Angelsey