Nice Day For a Road Trip!

We left the marina at the very early hour of 9.30am! Incredibly early for us, but we wanted to beat the worst of the forecast crap weather.

The closer we got to London the weather deteriorated rapidly, thank god we were in the UK where they know how to drive proper like!

We arranged to meet up with some friends from Oz at South Mimms services, it was the closest to their digs in Cheshunt, they are over here for  Christmas, we will have a proper catch up in early January when they come up North to the boat.

We had a good old chat for a coupe of hours then we left for our final bit of the journey to Bearstead Kent, by now the weather was much worse it was a bit of a struggle to keep the motorhome in one lane, it was handling a bit like the boat in the wind gusts.

We are now safely moored up in the campsite, I cannot believe how much the van is rocking in the wind, its worse than the boat!

I have to walk the doggies soon, I don't want to go, they arn't too keen either.  

Catching up.

Yesterday we went to Macclesfield to pick up some post and parcels from Elaine's dads house, there were a lot of Chritsmas cards plus some parcels. We then popped down to the  Macclesfield town centre to do a bit of last minute Xmas shopping.

Another reason for a visit to Macc was to catch up with emails and pay some bills as the internet had been out in Stoke since Wednesdays storm, apparently a transmitter in Stone was knocked out. One of the consequences of this was that we were hit with a late payment plus interest payment on our credit card, we rang Barclays and told of them of the internet and phone problem and they reversed the charge. 

We got back to the boat in the early evening so decided to go down to the local Thai restaurant for a very tasty dinner.

This morning we were invited for a Sunday brunch and drinkies on Dot and Gordon's boat NB Ewn ha Cul, once again a very tasty brunch, Diane from NB Ferndale also joined us.

We then went back to the boat and transferred a lot of gear across to the motorhome, it is very handy as we can get the motorhome very close to the boat.

We then went up to the local servo and filled up the van with diesel....gulp! hopefully we can get away early tomorrow and head off to Kent, we are also going to swing by Cheshunt on the way to catch up with  a couple of Aussie friends who are over here for a couple of weeks. 

Merry Christmas Blog Readers XXX

Click here  Happy Christmas !

Police Camera Action!!

Yesterday we tried out the load carrying capacity of the Citroen C3 by loading it up with 150KG of Coal and 80KG  of Kitty litter plus a load of shopping from the posh Tesco at Meir Heath, no Trackie Dack wearing 16 year old girls with 3 kids from 3 different dads there I tell ya. Not that that is anything wrong with that!



Last night the wind really got up and we lost the TV satellite signal, watching the Great Train Robbery A Robbers Tale, luckily it didn't last long, tonight we watched the second part of The Great Train Robbery A Coppers Tale, good bit of television.

Talking of coppers, we popped down to Stone to see the nice Polish guys in the car wash to get the car cleaned up, it was looking very very grubby inside and out. we had just picked the car up when a orange Nissan screamed past us, and I mean screamed, it was going flat out right through the centre of quiet peaceful Stone, then right behind them came five police cars in hot pursuit.....exciting stuff.

The perp didnt get too far, the old bill had ambushed him on the A34 and he was in a ditch.

I read tonight that they had arrested 4 young uns from Birmingham who had come to Stone to nick cars, no doubt they will be out on the streets tomorrow.

We also cleaned out the motorhome today in preparation for our Christmas tour.

Up At Sparras

Elaine had an appointment up at Manchester before first light.

This meant that we had to get out of our nice cosy warm bed at 5.00am!

I took the doggies for a walk around the marina in icy conditions, I took a pic of the marina with a nice bright moon in the background.

It took a fair while to de-ice the car, then we were off in a quick dash up the M6.

Many thanks once again to Diane off NB Ferndale for looking after the doggies. 

Normal service plus a good lay in will start tomorrow.  

Aston Marina Xmas Do

Every Monday we have a boaters afternoon tea, but today we had the Christmas afternoon tea laced with copious amounts of alcohol and lots of Christmas nibbles ...


The marina management let us use one of the huts.  Let's face it who else would want to sit in an unlit and unheated hut apart from a bunch of hardened live-aboard canal cruisers!

We had a very good turnout of all the usual suspects plus a few other guests ...

A good time was had by all.  I didn't hear any talk of the benefits of different types of marine toilets, although.......

......the ladies were chatting about the merits of using a 'shewee' in a lock!
Click here for details. Apparently come the first snowfall they are going to have a competition on writing their names in the snow! I love the ladies of Aston Marina they are my sort of mates!

The doggies were on their best behavior and were all blinged up ...

A most enjoyable afternoon.  There will be more, but a lot of the regulars are disappearing this week off to family Christmases ... this was the last chance for a large get together.

The Things You Find On A Country Walk

Firstly back to Thursday ... whilst in downtown Stone we spotted this chap playing a didgeridoo. Elaine chucked some money in his hat and gave his dog some chews that she had just bought for our boys!



On Thursday night an old mate from Australia, who now lives in Wigan, dropped by for the night. We had a good catch up followed by dinner down the local spoons ...

He left the following morning at the ungodly hour of 9.00am!
It was good to have a catch up ...

Friday was the grimmest day for a long time ...


We took the dogs for a short walk but we all got soaked, the dogs hated it ...

As the weather was so crap I had a go at making Sue from NB Festina Lente's recipe for Stilton and Grape flat bread, which actually turned out pretty good if I say so myself!


We popped up to Macclesfield on Saturday to catch up with Elaine's dad and brother, Trev - also pick up some mail and freight.  We took the remainder of the bread with us, it was soon demolished ... a success!!

Today we went for a walk through the Trentham Estate ...


It was quite a steep walk to the monument.  Elaine managed it fine, being dragged up the incline by workhorse Bombo ...

 

We made it to the top and checked out the monument erected to the memory of George Granville, Duke of Sutherland, Marquess of Stafford, K.G ...

We had a few minutes to spare so I quickly tagged it ...

We carried on the walk and came across some deer running around ...

Then it went a bit peculiar when we came across a troop of monkeys!

At first we only spotted a couple, but within 30 minutes we had about 15 of them checking us out!

There were about eight in this tree alone ...

It was quite strange to see monkeys in an English wood in the winter!  The dogs didn't know what to make of them, but erred on the side of caution and just squeaked at them.


On the way back to the good-ship we dropped into The Railway at Norton Bridge for a swift one.  We like this pub ... no food, no frills just a nice warm country pub with a brunette Jayne Mansfield behind the bar, who turns out to be an ex prison officer!  This is her first venture into owning a pub, she took the reins last Thursday.  Really nice landlady and friendly pub ... we might make it our 'local' !! (This is the pub we recently saw Shamus Oblivion and the Megadeath Morrismen in recently).

After that little trip we went back to the boat where Elaine made a lentil and cheese bake with brussels sprouts and roast tatties ... now she is firmly installed in her seat watching the X-factor final ... yawn !!!