And the Boat Never Moved

[CooWee]

And the Boat Never Moved!

 

Day 1, 20^th October, 2013 (Sunday)

 

Decided to travel across to Brundall on a Sunday rather than a Saturday, I was lucky with the weather, not always so lucky with the traffic.  Horse boxes, ye gads; between Oakham and Stamford on the A606 I and many motorists fumed a behind trailer driven horse box, I do not know why he had to drive that slowly, 20mph tops, a modern tractor could have comfortably out paced him/her.  It is nice countryside though, from Melton to Stamford, which I am told, is a nice town.  Funny how the Top Gear team when they’re going about caravans, never mention horse boxes, as far as I am aware.  I wonder why?  Moving on, after getting past another two or three horse boxes arrived at Swaffham and went to Waitrose to stock up and fill up with petrol, so I did not have to bother on the way back, as it turned out I did have to anyway.  Resumed the journey on the A47 towards Brundall and was quite surprised at how much traffic there was, moving well, but plenty of it.  Arrived at the mooring to see Moonlight Shadow looking really good, moored with a lot of slack, as were all the boats that I could see, due to the gusty wind and quite a high rise and fall of tide.  Unloading and loading MS was a bit tricky, at times I had to pull MS into the mooring to get on, eventually everything that needed to be was on the boat, took it out of me a fair bit (chronic heart failure for those who don’t know), but once everything was on board and stowed away, i.e., slung on the other bed, car parked, down sit, beer in hand, happiness, albeit a tired happiness.  Particularly so when the heavens opened, I thought nah nah nah nah nah, you missed.  Finished off the evening with a few glasses of red, red wine, watched a bit of telly, once I’d won the fight with the aerial and then went to, oh what do they call it, ah bed!

 

Day 2, 21^st October, 2013 (Monday)

 

Trafalgar Day dawned very early for me, 0350, I do not think that I have a sleep pattern; it is a very random one if I do.  Diarrhoea, a frantic dash to the toilet which is quite a distance away in these circumstances, here we go I thought.  I have a condition called diverticula, amongst others, which is classed as a western disease, because I didn’t eat enough fibre and yet I like vegetables, not so much fruit.  It cannot be cured, but it can be kept in check by taking Fybogel, which as the nurse so attractively put it, “plumps up your stool”.  A further three visits followed during the course of the morning, with some blood.  The morning included a visit to Budgen’s and I had a chat with Ged Morgan about doing a VHF course at Broom sometime next year, any recommendations for a hand held would be welcome, I am currently looking at Icom at present.  I am quite keen to do this.  If your spouse does it as well, it is half price for them.  Obviously today I cannot move too far away from a toilet and I do not want to go on the boat if I can avoid it.  Brummie Chris (as against Broom Chris) arrived around 1500.  Another trip trip to the loo, but things are a bit plumper now and it is settlng down, I hope!

[Hylander]

And The Boat Never Moved  -   sounds as if everything else did though.....         As a fellow sufferer you have my sympathy.    Enough said there.  Do hope you are feeling better now.    I hope the rest of your holiday trip was happier.

[BuffaloBill]

 

 

 It is nice countryside though, from Melton to Stamford, which I am told, is a nice town. 

 

Stamford is a lovely town for visitors. Lousy if you live here and want

to use your car!

Narrow streets full of visiting shoppers and town centre workers leaving

their cars in them making them nigh on impossible to get by 

 

Oh! Hang on a minute..........I live here so must be okay 

[CooWee]

Thanks for the sympathy Hylander, I in turn offer mine to you, it ain't funny sometimes.

 

For what its worth here is the rest of the tale.

 

All plumped up again!!  Didn’t bother with breakfast all the same and today Chris and I decided to drive down to Duxford, it has to be something like twenty years since I was last there, so it should be an interesting re-acquaintance.  We arrived about 1130 and it was a sort of bit of everything kind of day weather wise, although we managed to remain dry, pretty much.

                We missed out the Land Warfare hangar, although the way successive governments are decimating our armed forces we may need to re-commission some of the equipment there.  I am not going into heavy descriptions about the various hangars, I am sure you are all aware of what Duxford is about, but if anyone has a particular query I would be pleased to try and answer it for you.  We started at the American Air Museum, through to the 1940 Ops Room, looked at Conservation in Action, carried on into the Battle of Britain, forward to Air and Sea and penultimately the Flying Aircraft hangar.  In the course of the above I popped into the Duxford Radio Society shack to have a little chat with the guys in there, a couple were busy hamming away, whilst there I noticed a couple of RV1155 radio receivers, I also have one, but it has not been used for years.  They were used in aircraft of the vintage of an Avro Lancaster or a Handley Page Hastings, which incidentally, was the first type of aircraft I ever flew in.  It goes without saying really, that there is a Hastings at Duxford.  Any road up, I digress; we now decided to have a late lunch and Chris and I had a ham and chicken pie with chips and a few veg.  I tell you what, that pie was absolutely scrumptious I cannot remember the last time I had chicken that tasted so good, almost worth the trip just for the pie, highly recommended by the pair of us and frustratingly I could not finish it.  We finally finished off our visit at the AirSpace hangar.  I cannot remember what time we left Duxford, around 1800 I think, and we got back to the boat around 1930.

               

Day 4, Wednesday, 23^rd October, 2013.

 

                Yesterday evening we decided on the following day, today, we would take the train to Cambridge, neither of us had ever been to Cambridge, although in a past life I had travelled to Marshall of Cambridge on Cambridge Airport on aviation business three or four times.  Since I’m here, another useless piece of information for you, Cambridge is as far as I am aware, the only airport in the U.K. that has the position dead side (opposite that of the normal circuit) actually over a graveyard.

                We caught the train to Norwich from Brundall and from Norwich the train to Cambridge, the journey time takes around one hour and a quarter and is pretty painless.  The first thing Chris and I did was look about for a café for a bit of breakfast, it did not take too long as there is an abundance of them.  We both ordered a bacon roll with a cappuccino, I usually leave the coffee until last, because the froth keeps the coffee hot I find.  The waitress came over and pointed to the coffee, suggesting I wasn’t happy with it, so I said it’s fine I just like to leave to last, then Chris said he’s sensitive to her and she didn’t get the nuance and said sorry and walked away leaving me somewhat embarrassed with a seven letter word in my head which cannot be repeated here.  One  – nil!

                We moved on into the town centre, which was full of bustle and cyclists, it certainly payed to keep your eyes open or else you’d be having a ride you didn’t expect!  Got to the river and saw all the punts lined up and thought briefly about having a punt, but it was a bit windy and with my health issues paddling at all is frowned upon, I’ve had to give up kayaking, frustratingly we decided to give it a miss.  Cost is £22 a pop if anyone else goes down that way and fancies a crack at it.  There are some nice looking buildings and because I didn’t take notes I cannot remember what they were.  Later on it was getting nearer lunch time and as we started to think about lunch we came across a place called Auntie’s Café, a place where Chris’ partner Sara used to go when a student at Cambridge, so we were going to go in there, but then I had an idea which I thought was the mark of a genius, or so I thought!  I said to Chris let’s not go in there then you can say to Sara I didn’t want to take Keith in there, I thought I’d prefer to take you in and listen to your stories about your university days.  That might work!!  We moved on to somewhere else, sat outside had a cake and coffee and watched some seriously pretty young ladies going about their business, made two old men very happy.  Two old men sitting outside a café “watching all the girls go by,” one says to another it’s nice out isn’t it...!  Time to head back to Norwich, so we caught a bus back to Cambridge station, as the bus approached the station it turned across the front and lurched and Chris fall and started to drape himself around this seated young lady adjacent to him and the harder he tried to keep himself upright the worse it got, quite funny really.  Eventually Chris managed to regain his equilibrium, after a few seconds I said “you did that on purpose,” to which she laughed.  Ha ha, one apiece, the equaliser!

                We eventually got back to Brundall and the boat and Chris packed and eventually took his leave back home and I awaited the arrival of Lord Paul in order to do his little photographic course over Thursday and Friday.  Daphne arrived around 1930 and dropped Paul off and over a couple of drinks we discussed the forthcoming two days.  The course went well, improved my confidence a bit, showed me a few things and to look at things in my immediate vicinity rather than looking into the distance.  The course is worth doing in my view.  Friday came around all too quickly and Daphne came to pick his Lordship up and whilst he loaded all his gear into the car I had nice little chat with Daphne and we said our goodbyes and I was left alone to confront my demons, which fortunately didn’t turn out that night.

                The following day I had to clean the boat which was a real struggle and it was 1030 when I just about finished, nearly corpsed me, when the engineer from Broom came aboard and asked if we clear the boat by 0900, absolutely no chance.  If you read this Matt I think it also applies to Thunder and Lightning, I have also spoken to Sue Hardy and she expressed the same sentiment as me.  I have e-mailed Andrew Barton, but the chap he tried to contact was on leave and that as far as I know is where the situation currently sits.  After that had a relatively painless trip back to the North West, apart from a bit of a do on the M6, but that was the first since I have been driving that route.

               

Here endeth the tale, thank you for reading.

[CooWee]

I forgot to thank John and Mary-Jane(Hockham Admiral) for the tip about bananas, I've never had so much fun - only kidding.  I don't much like bananas, but I like cramp not at all and since I've started eating bananas regularly I have hardly had a twinge.

 

Many thanks.