Bartimaeus

Our view from the boat this morning should have included the distant hills to the east, but they were obscured by mist.  We were a couple of miles from Rufford overnight, so we moved back to the mooring of the previous night in order to be more conveniently placed to visit the Old Hall.  We got the batteries up to 99% in doing so, but the weak sun was unable to get the batteries to 100% today.

After lunch and a tour of the house we went for a further walk in the gardens.  An avenue leads directly towards the church, and was presumably intended to be a pleasant route there for the family.  Unfortunately when we reached the gates we found they were padlocked shut.  To get out we had to retrace our steps and then exit from the car park on to the A road.

The afternoon weather was much better than we had expected, so we decided to cycle to the supermarket.  The direct route is along the aforementioned A road – the main road between Liverpool and Preston.  In order to have a more enjoyable ride we diverted away from it.  This involved doing three sides of the rectangle instead of one, so our journey was nearly three times as long as it might have been.

The local countryside is flat and covered with drainage ditches.  It felt very much like cycling through Holland.  One of the tiny roads was called Sword Meanygate – nothing like as spectacular as its name.  There were a number of other Meanygates in the area.  Apparently: “… any road with meanygate after it gave the farmers with that name … the right to pass over the landlords land to take produce or animals to market without paying a toll.”