Gosh what a busy month! We’ve managed to get ourselves involved in no end of
endeavours.
To start with we gave Lindsay and Paul a hand with their new
mooring. They’ve only been there a few weeks but they’ve made tremendous
progress. They’ve turned what was a hawthorn and bramble covered slope down to
the canal into the beginnings of a garden with a parking space and steps down
to their boat.
We gave them a hand piling the support posts in and making a tidy edge between their plot and the new roadway.
On board Legend we now have a shiny support for the new log
box cover.
It is not fixed in place so it can come down for low bridges if
needs be. Later on, when we stop using the fire and the log pile recedes a bit,
it'll get decorated with colourful diamonds to match the cratch window and
(eventually) the front doors.
Our next good deed was for the Canal and River Trust. Stoke
Bruerne locks were having a major refurbishment as part of the scheduled winter
maintenance program,
and upon draining one of the pounds on the flight a gaping
hole in the bank was revealed.
As the works were already running late and no
time had been allocated to repair it, a very short notice (ie. tomorrow) call
was put out over several canal related Facebook groups for volunteers to go
along and help. As we had nothing of vital importance on our calendar, we
grabbed our steelies and scruffy clothes, packed some sandwiches and were ready
and willing in the museum car park the following morning.
Half of our party was tasked with filling sandbags with a
ballast/cement mix and loading them onto a truck, which was then driven down to
the site where the rest of us were waiting to pack them into the hole. We can
tell you with good authority that sandbags are really heavy, and really
uncooperative.
Getting the bottom layers in wasn’t too bad, but trying to
squeeze the top ones in between the previous layer and the concrete was nigh-on
impossible. However, we persevered and after a good deal of kicking, thumping
and whacking with spades the end result looked pretty good. We also got to see
our friend Katherine who lives in one of the lock cottages, and got a free
coffee in the café. It was a small insight into what the maintenance teams get
up to in the winter and we seriously take our hats off to them.
Then along came Doris Day! Or, more precisely, the day after
our Stoke Bruerne workout the UK was visited by Storm Doris. We huddled inside,
played cards and watched films while all around the tree-tops danced back and
forth in ever more frenzied excitement. The next morning it was a different world;
calm, serene, and perfect for boating. Before we set off we picked up all the
kindling that Doris had so kindly deposited on our roof and all over the
towpath. We were quite concerned that she would have caused more severe
disruption on our route from Basin Bridge to Hartshill, and we were right.
She’d brought several trees down, but luckily the only one that had gone right
across the navigation was in Nuneaton, and that had been promptly dealt with by
CRT’s contractors before we got there.
Another day helping out followed; this time at Mum and Dad’s
house where the old willow tree that had been in their garden for half a
century - and that had been Ann-Marie’s swing support, den, and climbing frame
- had fallen down.
Karen, Andrew, and Alex came round as well and we all
pitched in. By lunch time we’d got the trunk in bits and away to the tip in two trips in Karen’s hard working Berlingo.
We stayed overnight at Karen’s so we could go to not one,
but two parties. The first was our friend Coops’ leaving do. He’s going to
Japan for two years. We took one rather rubbish selfie to mark the occasion.
Goodness knows what the Japanese will make of a giant wearing a bow tie.
The second party was for Ann-Marie’s Uncle John’s 90th birthday.
There
was lots of catching up with cousins, and lots of promises to keep in touch
more often, followed by a long drive home to a cold boat.
After all that it was nice to have a bit of a rest. We
couldn’t put our feet up for too long however, as two days later we were off
again, this time to Stanstead for a flight to Bordeaux and a week In Jussas with
Frankie and Harry. We left Legend at Hartshill with loads of time to spare, but it was still
rather un-nerving to find ourselves stationary on the A14, wondering when, or
if, we’d start moving again. By the time we got to the airport we’d lost half
an hour, but nothing we hadn’t made allowances for, and we were still at the
front of the queue at the gate.
We had a lovely week with Frankie and Harry, they took us to
Blaye on the banks of the Gironde Estuary where we had a walk around the Citadel before a delicious lunch in a little cafe...
then into Bourg, a little further upstream on the Dordogne...
...before going back to Blaye for an evening wine tasting.
The
hardest part was getting the two concrete drain rings we were going to use for
the form off the back of the truck...
...but with a little help from the winch in the workshop and a lot of pulling by everyone, we got them safely to the floor...
...then rolled them into position.
Dave &
Angie and Graham & Dawn stopped off at Jussas for a couple of nights
on their way back to the UK from a winter in Spain in their motor homes, so
they all pitched in with the stone work.
...and in no time at all it was looking
like it had been there for ever.
With everyone mucking in we got the rest of
the rubble pile loaded into the truck for couple of trips to the tip. All in
all a very satisfying few days’ work.
The weather wasn’t the best in France; it was cold and wet
for quite a lot of our week and we had to do the concreting and building work
between showers. Happily, in the end karma came to the rescue with an Air
Traffic Control strike that gave us two extra days holiday, during which the
sun came out and it was glorious. That was lovely; as well as getting sunburnt
while helping with the planting of the Jussas vinyard...
...we had time to tidy up
the stonework round the well and make a wooden cover for it.
We also managed to
move all the leftover big bits of rock to make some raised beds for a little
kitchen herb garden outside J&P’s door.
When we got back to Legend, spring had sprung and our roof
boxes were a riot of colour from the daffodils and pansies.
You’d have thought
that after all the graft from the previous couple of weeks we’d have had a few days relaxing, but no. Our sofa
has given us sterling service for the last six years but just recently it's started sagging and looking a bit drab, so we’ve
been looking - and failing to find – a suitable replacement. There just isn’t
one available that does what our old one does in the simple and effective way
that it does it. So after lots of research and watching of Youtube, we decided
that as the frame was still serviceable and it was just the springs that had
failed it wouldn’t be beyond us to re-spring it. We ordered new springs and
clips, jute cord to lace them together and some hessian material to cover them,
then Dave started dismantling.
By the next day it was on its way back together
again with ten new springs in place of the previous eight, sturdier lacing and a far stronger
covering.
Dave's table leg spring stretcher in action.
By that evening he’d got the cover back on over some new wadding and
it was better than new.
We’re quite sure it’ll last for at least another six
years and hopefully a lot longer. The next thing we’re going to do is make a removable
washable cover so that we can keep it looking cleaner than it does at the
moment.
After that we thought it was high time we did a bit of
boating, so on a beautiful spring morning we set off from Hartshill towards the locks at Atherstone.
Kim and George
came down with us making it the third time we’ve had them aboard to do this
pretty flight. With George smiling happily at the cheerful lock-keepers and our
roof full of colourful flowers we celebrated surviving our sixth winter on the cut.
