Bartimaeus

We had a leisurely start with not far to travel. It was Heather’s last day with us and we were just taking her to the train station.

Heather and I sat by the open side hatch having our breakfast looking at this  view.

We spent a lot of time watching fish before setting off but the photos of me trying to get a picture were clearer than those of the fish.

At first I could only see tiny fish. The longer we looked the bigger the fish we could see. Photographing them was hard. The bigger ones were further away.

When we were going along it was still possible to watch them as the water was quite clear. I managed to get the bigger ones nearer the boat.

When Heather was driving she suddenly shouted “turtle!” I’ve never seen that before. It wasn’t in the water but sitting on a branch – even stranger! We reversed to get a good look. We all had just enough time for a picture, then it moved and became unseated and flailed its legs, but quickly got purchase and disappeared into the water.

We went to Carnforth and at last Heather found a shop selling post cards. When we’d met her in Preston she had a card to post on the way to the boat, so no doubt writing a postcard or two on the train would be some of her entertainment to be posted somewhere on the way home. There seems to be a stream train at Carnforth and much publicity is up that Brief Encounter was filmed there. We will probably return and perhaps then the heritage centre will be open.

We waved Heather off and had a further explore of Carnforth and found it had an excellent supermarket and DIY shop. We had some difficulty moving along as it was shallow. Shane went to investigate the weedhatch a couple of times. One time there was a stick that had clanged against the boat. He couldn’t get everything off the propeller so wanted a saw that would access it and got an adjustable length one there and some metal primer for when we find time to touch up the occasional scrape (oops!)

We had a bit of difficulty finding a mooring. We couldn’t get close to the bank. I managed to get off and walked along looking for a mooring spot when the one we tried had failed. It was still sunny and I found 3 or 4 butterflies lying flat on the path as I went along.

Later we tried again further down where there wasn’t much vegetation. We could still hear the M6 but it might not be noisy inside. Still we had no luck getting it any nearer the bank. A gangplank had  again. At least my walk had some nice views and I managed to see this viaduct.

We are eventually moored at a caravan park on a jetty. Someone arrived after dark. They had even more difficulty getting along the canal than we had.

A quiet evening with no guest. I think we would have really struggled with the Glasson Arm without her and would definitely have missed the terrapin. I also have a couple of new recipe ideas. Thanks, Heather.