Saturday 23 April 2011

The Ashby cruise fire and a Streethay freebie !

Ok, so now I am relaxed and able to attend to my blog a few posts about our recent Ashby cruise.

We set off on the Sunday just after lunch and had a reasonably easy passage away from the hectic Fradley spring sunny Sunday. We had a easy and surprisingly boat free trot to Streethay for supplies.

Having not received my nipple from Stuart - black mark there, I asked Ray if he had one. He got his nipple box out and offered me to select but nothing seemed to fit. He was noticeably frustrated and did comment 'we normally can supply anything.. ! ' He took me into the back where all the bearing cases were but it seemed they were sold nippleless. I set about paying for my gas, loo blue and a decent second hand double skinned chimney he had whilst he went downstairs in search of the right sized nipple. Just before we left he came out of the workshop with the right sized threaded nipple but it was an angled type.... I took it, screwed it in and it nipped up perfectly pointing upwards as you would expect...;-) ready to take the grease into the new bearing. I asked the cost and he shook his head so that is my clain to fame with some thanks to Ray for a free supply from Streethay (he has had enough of my folding before s I don't feel bad)

Once serviced we cruised to our first nights mooring just past Hopwas - that was until one of the two boats offside (there are two cruisers who moor, no doubt quite legitimately, off side just after Hopwas in a little copse) started a very noisy clack clack type generator until about 9.30 pm !

Next day saw us past the two Glascote locks and up the Atherstone flight without passing a boat - lovely.

Our second night mooring was in a small cutting just a few bridges away from Valley cruises. Perfect mooring apart from about 10pm I heard cracking and looked out to see a massive and I mean massive fire raging above us and blowing directly over Waterlily dropping all sorts of sh!t sorry soot onto us. So at 10 pm we were bow hauling her away from the fire to safety about half a mile away.

Look at the roof !!

Take care

Nev

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