Last Sunday (the 21st) we went up to a place near Ashbourne to meet Carol and Sonja, who were up there with their mobile race track at a fund raiser for a dog’s home.
Bare Arms! She's tough, that Sonja!
Start of the Brailsford GP
A local motorcycle club have a run out, finishing up at the kennels and bringing gifts of dog food. Just For Dogs has a good reputation in the area, so if you’re looking for a canine companion you could do worse than give them a call.
We did very well this year, being invited out on Tuesday, Christmas Day and Boxing Day, so we had to do hardly any cooking ourselves. In fact, with the trip we made up to Yorkshire on Monday, where we were fed by good friends Val and Johnny, I don’t think the oven went on until yesterday! So thanks to Kay and Paul, Dad and Ann and Andy and Nyree, as well as the aforementioned Val and Johnny, for making sure we had a Christmas to remember.
We had a surprise visitor yesterday. One of Margaret’s sons, Howard, lives in Ireland, and had told everyone he was having a quiet time over there. All the while he was secretly planning to fly across and drop in unexpectedly on the family. I was the only one pre-warned; he had to tell me to find out where we were! Everyone else live normal, housebound lives, and could be reckoned to be where expected. Margaret was well chuffed, we hadn’t seen him for over year.
So he had a hectic time, flying into Liverpool, driving up to Ingleton, then Middlesborough, then down to us. Stopped overnight with us, then off again this morning up to Manchester and then Cleavelys, before catching a flight back across the Irish Sea on Thursday. I think he’ll need another few day’s holiday afterwards to recover!
We’re going to be leaving Mercia tomorrow, intending to spend New Year’s Eve out in the sticks somewhere. We’ll let the new year in with just the three of us.
It’s been a good stay here in Willington, even though we’ve not spent a lot of it on the boat. The facilities are comprehensive and clean, and someone was round filling in the potholes in the road at the weekend!
We’ve taken advantage of the laundry to get all the bedding washed and dried, and will be filling and emptying respective tanks before we leave.
More shots of Mercia, taken from the footbridge over the entrance channel, and panning West to East.
I should be back to posting regularly again now that we’re going to be on the move again.
Locks 0, miles 0
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