Saturday 18th June
Today was a totally dry day. No really, absolutely no rain fell here at all. A miracle I know and one to be savoured. We spent the morning doing – not much really. Himself was fishing to get bait for his evening session and I did the best part of nothing actually.
We decided to walk in to the village (about 2 miles) to go to the shop as things were getting a bit desperate on the comestibles front. This we duly did after which we walked another mile to The Lammastide Inn. This is a really nice pub and we had a lovely pint or two of Old Hooky there.
The walk back to the boat was about 2 miles so we did a 5 mile round trip which was good exercise as we had not done much lately.
I did manage to do the ironing in the afternoon between football matches. Ken did some more fishing in the evening and caught a rather nice bream. Well, it would have been lovely had it not have wriggled itself free of his grip and plopped on to the floor of the cratch depositing scales and slime everywhere!
Sunday 19th June
Today we planned to travel from Sharpness to Park End Bridge, moor up and then walk to Epney which is on the river and has a nice pub. Last time we went there it was pissing down and we couldn’t sit outside and enjoy the view. This was something we hoped to do this time. We also plannned to make a water stop at Purton and a loo/rubbish stop at Saul Junction.
The weather was dull but mild although the wind was increasing a bit. We got to Purton, stopped and did the water then I rang the bridge keeper to get him to open the two bridges. Well, that was the idea but I tried to do this sans my glasses, misread my contacts list and rang Patch Bridge by mistake. Then I discovered that the number I had for Purton Bridges was wrong anyway so I had to look it up in the Nicholson’s. I rang it but got no reply. All this time Ken was ‘treading water’ so to speak to stop the boat from going past the red light.
Eventually the bridge keeper spotted us, opened the bridges and we were on our way again. Because it can be a bit chaotic at Saul Junction we had a contingency plan for if we couldn’t get on the services moorings there but it was not needed and we did the rubbish and loo with no problems.
Then it was off to Parkend Bridge where, due to the lack of mowing on the towpath we were unfortunately unable to find a suitable place to moor up. Plan B came in to operation which was to carry on to Sellars Bridge and moor where we had moored last week on the way down to Sharpness.
This we did, mooring in the exact same spot, after signalling our intent to a lurking yoghurt pot which was eyeing up our space! We went to The Pilot again expecting to have to brave the hordes of families out for Father’s Day lunch. But this did not seem to be that popular a venue and was not particularly busy.
We returned to the boat just in time to see Andy Murray win the Aegon Classic at Queens Club. Well, I did, Ken was getting the dinner ready! We also returned to the boat just as it started raining again!
Tomorrow we are going to go back to Gloucester and find out the state of play with the river and if we ever have a hope of leaving.
