Bartimaeus

I can't weave Born Slippy into this little story of the day much. We aren't even having Lager Lager this evening. But it's a good song to dance to. Clare is a very excellent born wiggly type of dancer btw.

Today we woke up to a beautiful morning, misty and quite bright. During breakfast we saw a person walking along the hedge the opposite side of the canal, along a route that shows as a path on the map but it shows it as going nowhere. And on our walk last night we'd seen no evidence of a way out the end the person was heading for. We just hope they knew what they were doing. Other maps are available obviously. And other paths.

We set off straight into lots of locks going downhill, me driving. Whereas Shane at least sometimes goes across the half width on half width lock gates, when he's just opened one half, Clare goes round (the outside, round the outside) rather than across.

At one point Shane looked at me rather sternly in a lock and I knew exactly what he meant, as I was not very far forward in the lock so was doing some forwardsing and backwardsing so as not to bump and also not to get caught on the cill, which forwardsing and backwardsing is not really needed if you are positioned well forward, but all I had to say to Shane to explain was "Beauty Barty bounced back" which she had done quite strongly on the front gate. Alles klar. She is a Beauty. In another lock, I had nipped to the loo, and while I was there, bearing in mind I was the only one aboard, I heard Barty start up. I knew that this meant that Clare and Shane had got the gates open and that Barty was setting off all by herself, Shane up to his tricks again playing with tech, in this case remote control for Boaty ! When we got to the water point at the Shroppie Fly (other Flys are quite likely available), I slipped as there was an absent rock in the canal wall I discovered with my foot and somehow saved myself and managed not to fall into the canal. Well we were getting water so it would have been OK timing for a shower. Clare and Shane abandoned me (!) (is that wise?) to give a book to the book swap and to shop, so I finished off the watering hopefully successfully, with reassurance from some coincidentally passing other Ortomarine boat owners (!)

There's nice gently rolling countryside round here, a lot of bird life, numerous geese, those of different feathers flocking separately. We saw a jay and a tree creeper, teenager looking cygnet, herons, mallards ...

After lunch we set off again, Shane driving. At a lock I stepped off Barty onto the side, and slipped a couple of inches, but was holding onto Barty's cabin roof so again managed to save myself.

We moored a couple of boat lengths from where we did the other night. Shane spotted a hare bounding across the field the other side of the canal, and we all had a really good view for a few minutes. I went for an evening stroll in the gloaming, with no sunset visible but it was atmospheric and lovely.

On my return Clare had remembered we had promised ourselves a Pimms as that is traditional for us. It was round about Pimms o'clock, shortly after 5 p.m. ish, although pretty much dark unlike how it more usually is for us on Pimms occasions. We didn't let that stop us but the photo is dreadfully blurred, low light conditions is my excuse.