Another change of plan

Well, Pete’s funeral went off as well as can be expected. There were a lot of people there, the chapel was full. So he got a good send off. But he would have been a little impatient with all the fuss.
Once again, thank you all for the messages of sympathy and support we’ve received over the last week or so.

We came south afterwards, staying the night with Mag’s son, George, and Christine at Ingleton. I needed a bit of a blow-out, so called a friend in the village and we had a romp up Ingleborough first thing on Saturday. We all enjoyed it, and it cleared my head and got things into some sort of perspective again.

Ingleborough Hill
Johnny on the way up…
We'd climbed up through the mist into a beautiful day...

And on the top
Me and Meg at the trig point

By mid afternoon we were back at the marina, and stayed there till today. We were intending to move out yesterday, but the strong wind made manouvering in a busy marina a definite no-no.

Wind driven waves in the marina
We pulled out this morning, and turned right (uphill), up the 2 Swanley locks and moored just past the winding hole near bridge 10. This is where we spent a couple of nights last week.

Swanley No 1 Lock
Sarah (aka Greygal) and Andy on their aptly named boat Greyhound (read the blog if you haven't already to see why it's apt) are just behind us having left the marina for a few days last Saturday.

NB Greyhound looking spick and span after a day's worth of elbow grease.
We’ve changed our plans yet again. We intended to be up at Ellesmere Port Boat Museum this coming weekend, so we could hire another car to go to Liverpool for my first ½ marathon of the year. But we’ve decided to hang on here instead, and will pop back into Swanley Bridge Marina for the weekend. It’ll put an extra 40 minutes on the journey Sunday morning, but we can live with that.

I took Meg for a good walk around to the north of the canal this afternoon. There’s a fine network of footpaths across the fields around here. But the local farmer is making life difficult for those who want to walk them.

Bull, cows and calves. We just got out of the field before they got to the stile.
I’m not usually bothered by farm animals, but I found those horns quite intimidating!

Electrified fence across a stile.

I touched it to check whether it was live or not. But unfortunately, not thinking, I was holding onto Meg to keep her away as I did, so we both got a jolt. It’s only low voltage so I felt not much more than a tingle, but Meg’s a lot smaller than me, and she didn’t half yelp. I lifted her over the fence and gave her a good fuss, and she was back to her normal self in no time.
I can understand the farmers wanting to protect their livestock, but aren’t there other ways?

Val and all our regulars - normal postings will be resuming asap....

Locks 2, miles 1