Bartimaeus

After another night of rain, it was sunny in the morning but very windy, so that the boat was moving a bit. It was meant to be slightly less windy in the afternoon and we couldn’t arrive at the marina until the afternoon. Shane continued with some work on the cupboard and I was doing a few of the never ending domestic tasks, and a little knitting, punctuated by swan feeding and a larger time than I expected looking up websites about British deer, after I saw one walking through the shrubs on the other side of the canal. It was quite hard to see and much paler than any of those  shown and I had to read several to find any description that matched, I’ve concluded it must have been a young fallow deer – not an expected canal side animal.

The couple of swans that were around looking for food in the morning were not actually very interested in most of what I offered. After  our lunch the pair appeared flying under the nearby bridge and one alighted on the water just beside the window. It is an impressive sight.

Shane had come to a stage with the cupboard where he felt he could pause. He has added some little shelves and I have put some of my bags of sewing, knitting needles and oddments and general  useful stuff like sellotape, scissors elastic bands in there and they fit perfectly. 

White shelving for colourful items

Today we were expected back at the marina and we needed to get going if we were to get there before the office closed. Shane drove and I did the small number of locks. Due to the heavy rain, our original exit route from Droitwich was unpassable so since the Severn, we are returning on a different (slightly longer) route. Shane had warned me the ratchets were different in this canal but I still managed to get oil on my fingers trying to use the first one. They don’t feel safe as they don’t stay in place while you are winding, only go in to hold it when you are finished and so you can’t pause and it feels like it is fighting against you.  They were different also in having side paddle gates to open as well as the ones on the lock itself. By the last lock I was less bothered and had the hang of them, though to be fair, Shane also helped so I did less winding altogether on the other two. The other difference was that there were white sticks beside the gates with “Please do not remove from this lock” written on some of them. It turned out some of the gates don’ t stay open well and these fairly flimsy sticks are be used to prop the gate arm in place, if you were on your own with a boat, as the gates could close while you were getting back to your boat. I had to hold a couple of them, while Shane was driving through, to stop them swinging back. I was glad there weren’t many of those locks.

We reached the marina before four, when the office shuts, and straight away another man , came out of his boat and offered to help us moor up as we were arriving at the office to “check in”.  The man from the office came out and said “Welcome back!” We got moored in our assigned space (excellent steering Shane) just before the rain started! We are slotted next to a boat called “Here We Go Again”.

We look forward to seeing the Ortomarine staff tomorrow and know they have already thought of the causes and solutions to some of the wee issues we have.

We have had a short walk round the marina, to catch the pink clouds, and hoped we might meet some other Ortomarine owners, partly to be sociable but also, were wanting to find a friendly soul to tell us the gate code, as we have forgotten after 3 and a half months and are currently locked in and can only leave by boat! We recognised some of their boats (including Here We Go Again), but didn’t see people in them. Someone can tell us tomorrow. But in the meantime we had enjoyed the sunset.