Bartimaeus

We continued back towards Stourport noticing that the water and waste tanks were both needing attention.  We found a pleasant rural mooring about half way and reckoned we'd be fine overnight.  I even thought there was enough water for a shower.  It turned out that when the water gauge showed about 48 litres the tank was in fact empty.

We had just about enough water for morning coffee and basic hygiene, but set off promptly the next day.  One of the many recent upgrades was adding a device that monitors the three tank gauges and translates the voltages they deliver to volumes.  I've now found the configuration for this and tweaked it - in future I hope we will get a more reliable reading as the tank nears empty.

I started making plans for this summer in January.  We had no idea when the boat would be ready for us, but we were certain of one bit of timing: there will be a total eclipse of the sun on August 12.  The only place we could reasonably reach to view totality was northern Spain.  We wouldn't normally plan to go that far south in August, but we decided this was a special enough reason.

What we hadn't anticipated was the extreme weather (climate?) events in Europe this year.  We had planned to travel by train, spreading the return journey over a couple of weeks.  The news has recently been full of stories of wildfires in France and Spain.  Trains have been suspended on the line we were scheduled to use, and another heatwave is starting.  The entire area we expected to visit is under extreme duress.  Reluctantly, we've decided to cancel the whole trip.

While we've been moving very slowly, I have occasionally found the enthusiasm to tackle some small jobs that have been on my list for a long time.  We came back from a tandem ride recently to find that the "door" to the tandem cupboard had fallen over.  While the tandem is out I usually leave it resting against the wall - presumably a boat passing too fast had rolled the boat so that it fell.  I've now fixed (and painted) a small block of wood to the door frame, problem solved.

Sometimes there is no convenient leaning place for the tandem at our mooring.  At some point I worked out that I could use the centre rope to support it.  Several times recently the bike fell over when another boat passed.  I realised that the easy solution to that was to put the wheels on the gunwale.  It looks very precarious, but there is a brake on the back wheel, so everything moves together.

We cancelled our plans to travel south in baking heat.  Ironically, the following morning we had the first rain since we returned to the boat.  It was light at first, and didn't last long, but we delayed a trip to the Ortomarine unit until the afternoon.  I'd had a package delivered there, and it was also convenient to have a quick chat about commissioning the heat pump.  This is now scheduled for next week - on the day we would otherwise have been leaving for Paris.

Today was Clare's birthday.  She has long given up on expecting me to surprise her with an amazing gift, but I did make a point of asking her what she wanted to do with the day.  She settled on a short bike ride to visit Hartlebury Castle.

We'd passed the entrance to the castle a number of times on our way to Ortomarine HQ.  We arrived in time to explore the grounds and walk around the moat before heading to the cafe for lunch.

After lunch we toured the inside of the castle which was the official residence of the Bishop of Worcester for many centuries (and over a hundred bishops).  It is now looked after as a visitor attraction and museum by a local charity.

We hadn't got as far as the Worcestershire County Museum when we headed back to the cafe for some afternoon refreshment.  The back wall of the cafe was decorated with a rendition of a painting we had seen inside the castle. The painting pre-dates photography, but is a fairly accurate rendition of the building - except the horse and carriage do not seem to be on the carriage circle.

We decided we'd had enough of the castle for the day.  Our entrance tickets are valid for twelve months, so we can come back to the museum another day.