Friday 26th July
We got up late again today (as is our wont) and slobbed about in the well deck having tea and fruit in the sunshine. This weather is absolutely lovely now it isn’t quite so hot and humid. It was getting on for 10 am before I even made it into the bathroom!
I did a quick bit of hoovering and we had a cup of coffee, then we trundled off to the shop for a paper. We went to the shop down at the docks, it is a bit limited but as we didn’t want anything else it was ok. Then we went to the High Bridge to see what ships were in the docks. There was one being loaded with scrap metal.
We wandered up to The Sharpness Docker’s Club about 12 pm (they only open 12-2) and sat outside. There is a lovely view of the river and also a view of the docks from there. We met a chap there who comes from Bath and lives on his boat. He had walked up from Slimbridge today and had his dog Bracken with him. She is a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever or Toller for short. We had never heard of it before, apparently they are the smallest retriever and come from Canada where they are bred as gun dogs.
Although the club shut at 2 pm (actually it was just before that when the steward asked me if I wanted to use the loo before he locked up!) we still managed to exceed the stated dose because we got talking to this chap and didn’t get back to the boat until gone 3. Whereupon we had a cup of tea and I did a bit of washing then we both fell asleep until about 5, it’s the hot weather obviously!
Ken is currently sitting in the cratch moaning about what a dead loss the fishing has been lately. A couple of nights ago he had three bait fish nicked off the hook or had lumps bitten clean out of them by zander or eels probably. Now he can’t even seem to catch any small fish for bait! This canal is like a pond, you can see practically every fish there is in it but he is unable to catch a single one!
The weather is supposed to go tits up tomorrow so we may go back up to Gloucester for a couple of days, go shopping and empty the loo etc then come back down here again next week.
