Out and About - But Not Far...

Day 10 in the No-Fixed-Abode Floating Gonzalez House-hold...

“The best laid plans of mice and men” could never take into account the CRT maintenance regime - we left Great Haywood Marina after giving our 90 day notice and took the risk that the weather would be mild enough for us to leave at the end of Feb (at the beginning of December it was a real gamble but the Marina said they would be happy to be ‘flexible’ on our leave date) but, because of work on the lock at Colwich, they closed down the section from GH to Colwich... I went for a wander to the lock with the dogs and the contractors re-lining the by-wash said it would be finished that day (2 weeks ago).... hey-hum!!

Sunset at Tixall Broadening

It’s been nice to sit at Tixall in this bright sunshine / cloudy stuff and watch the world go by (and do Amp-watch on my new solar controller (toy))... It seems that there’s enough of an input (even at this time of year) from the two 100W panels to cope with all our 12V equipment. Just have to run the engine and the inverter for the 240V equipment - chargers for laptop, phones, hoover and the washing machine....

We did a stack of washing before leaving civilization (?) and travelled all of 500m to the lock in GH hoping that it would be opened earlier than scheduled; we soon got fed up with that location and Julie was feeling a bit ‘hemmed-in’ so we had a change of plan, I deftly (slowly) performed a reverse double S and we popped down the Staffs & Worcs to Tixall where we have been doing the obligatory logistical experiments to see how long we can make a tank of water, WC cassette and battery charge last... all-in-all quite successful - just gotta ration the beer to align with required shopping trips!

As I’m retired now (HA!!!), all the jobs that need to be done (along with the ones I’ve been putting off), are being thrown my way... for example, today I cleaned out the P traps to the sinks, hoovered, scrubbed the kitchen floor and hall carpet, drove the boat back to the junction, filled the water tank and emptied the cassettes, and ran the washing machine for 2 loads (which worked spiffingly), as well as other smaller jobs and walking the dogs.... 

All Julie did was a days’ work, shopping, sort the washing and dry it, cook a marvelous tea and make me smile in-between... It’s definitely a team effort this relaxing lifestyle (blue and pink jobs). I think I’ll stick at it for now.

Flo at 10 weeks

The afore-mentioned dogs were recently boosted in numbers to two and a half - we got our puppy, Flo in December (a JackTeaser) and she is settling-in well to the boating lifestyle... 

Dog Section News:

The sprog (youngest member of the pack) decided today would be ‘barking day’ and did so (all morning) whilst the human was cleaning stuff... we think he got fed up so we were all banished to the roof bit while he drove us up to the water-point - spotted 5 ducks, several noisy geese, 2 fishermen, 1 heron and 0 squirrels (at least the sun was out so we could get some rays)... went for a walk after and Diddie got the usual canal dunking after a successful mud-diving episode. Worn out, sleeping duties all evening and onward thru the night....