Crick Marina

We had a really good night out with Keith last night. We walked into Crick village to the RED LION pub where the Old Speckled Hen was on form and the food was even better. With a choice of 13 vegetarian meals (I’m not a veggie) I had to give it a go and had sweet potato, chick pea and spinach in a coconut sauce with rice. It was AMAZING! Best veggie meal I’ve had for a long, long time. Keith and Roger had more carnivorous options and both had favourable reviews for their meals so it was a success all round.

view from the boat this morning, if only all marinas were like this......

Today has been very sunny and hot, a total change from Sunday when we had to wear waterproofs and have the central heating on. We took the granny trolley for a trip into the village and stocked up at the excellent Co-op store. This has had a total re-vamp since we were here last year and was very busy. On the way back I popped into the garden centre at the entrance to Crick Marina and bought a couple of courgette plants. I needed a new plastic tub to put them in but they didn’t have anything suitable for sale, so the lady on the check-out went routing in the back and gave me a couple of large plant pots to use until I could find something suitable elsewhere ,which I thought was really nice of her to say that I only spent £1 on the plants.

Shetland pony in the field beside the garden centre

We were throwing bread out of side hatch this afternoon to feed the fish. At first it was just small roach, similar to those we’d been feeding in Market Harborough, but then you could almost hear “dur-rum, dur-rum” as a wave came across the marina….. It wasn’t Jaws but a couple of 2ft.6in long 8in deep carp! They just sucked the chunks of bread off the surface of the water and are so tame you could actually feed them by hand!

the chunk of bread was about 2in wide

This evening we went round to Keith’s boat for a BBQ. We sat out in the evening sun, chilling and planning future voyages and had another really good time. Unfortunately Keith’s wife is still in Christchurch, New Zealand and just before we left she was on the phone to say they had had yet another earth quake about 2 hours previously. We don’t see anything on TV anymore since the big quake in September, but they are still having almost daily quakes and the devastation is unbelievable. I think maybe this latest quake was the last straw for her and she’ll be coming over to stay here for a while really soon. If you’re interested you can see some of the devastation HERE