A day for dashing around!

We're due in dry-dock tomorrow so had to go back to Manchester today to collect our car. We also had to go to the wholesalers for painting supplies and collect the blacking which should have been delivered yesterday. Except that it hadn't been delivered.......... and at 3.30 after lots of phone calls to the supplier and Fedex we had to go into the centre of Manchester  AT RUSH HOUR!!!!   to collect it from Fedex's depot. We've been without a car for over a month and, apart from a couple of short train and bus rides, have been living life in the slow lane.  Today more than made up for that!  The traffic jams, noise and fumes just made me more glad than ever that we've dropped out of the rat race. We finally made it back to Marple by 5.30 and then had to move the boat & car to Whiteley Green where we're moored tonight. I did the 20 minute car journey and Roger took the 2.5 hour boat journey. We met about half way as Chico & I walked to meet him after leaving the car in the car park.

The Macclesfield Canal is looking really beautiful at the moment with all the trees blossoming and green everywhere. The ducks have all paired up, even the Mandarins, and there are geese on nests all over the place.

Mandarin ducks

The usual continuous moorers (and there are lots on the Macc.) are still in residence, some haven't moved since October.

Oh yes I almost forgot,  we have satellite TV for the first time in 4 weeks! We've had digital TV most of the time up the Huddersfield Narrow but we don't have a digital recorder which meant we had to watch everything in real time whereas on satellite we can record & watch at our leisure.