Saturday, September 01, 2012

Jannock’s summer trip – Day #1

Saturday 1st September

OK, so we’re starting our summer trip on the first day of autumn but I can’t help that – blame the Olympics.

We arrived at the boat late-ish last night so just loaded our stuff on and decided to retire early, however, the first task was to refit all the secondary double glazing panels due to our mooring at Banbury Lane bridge being very close to the West Coast main line. This morning SittingComfortablymy first task was to transfer the contents of the jerry cans I had brought with me into Jannock’s diesel tank. I then locked up the car and we were off to join the Northbound procession heading towards Weedon.  We passed this boat heading south with the row of three contented passengers sat across the front tug deck. We originally titled them ‘Tug Boat Grannies’ but then noticed one was a fella when we got closer and was possibly not old enough to be a grannie. Later we met nb Laura travelling south still bearing the CoalBoat names of Michael and Angela Faull on the side even though they sold her ages ago. We were also reminded of the fact that we are having our summer holiday in autumn by the site of this boat load of coal heading down the canal for sale to boaters to keep them warm in winter.

On our arrival at Wilton bottom lock we were seventh in the queue to ascend. We started our wait moored south of this bunch of trees that protrude from the bank. If you look carefullyTreeBoat it would appear that they are actually growing in an old fibreglass cruiser that had sunk against the bank. The boat we partnered up the flight was en-route to a new mooring at Brinklow marina. The owners have only had it since February and had moored it at Oundle marina on the Nene but the combination of drought restrictions followed by flooding have forced them to move it back onto the canal system so that they actually get to use her.

One of Brenda’s objectives this trip is to use up all the old provisions stored in Jannock’s cupboards and so we have decided to score each of them as we use them up. You may remember the tinned carrots that scored 0 (zero) on Saturday 18th August  (see Chillax at Newlands) so here goes:-

Store Cupboard Day #1 = Chira chicken meatballs in tomato sauce.  These were given a grudging 4/10 as they were far too sweet (and obviously designed for kids) We had them with pasta and home grown runner beans – guess which tasted the best? The runner beans of course!

Graham

www.jannock.org.uk

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