I’m ashamed to say I forgot to get Roger a card. Normally this wouldn’t have been any big deal as he hardly ever bothers but this morning he presented me with a lovely card and told me he had a surprise arranged for later in the day. We set off up the 4 Hurleston Locks, battling the gusty winds and low water level in the pounds and stopped at the top to fill up with water. The engine had been making strange noises so Roger had a look down the weed hatch to see if anything had got caught round the propeller. This is a very rare occurrence for us as we have a prop-protector blade fitted which normally cuts through anything that gets caught, but we’d picked up a load of knotted plastic rope attached to a polythene sheet and that was just too much for the blade to cut through. You can see from the photo how the blade was chopping through the sheet but the knotted rope was just too tough and had to be yanked off.
We normally only cruise for between 3 and 4 hours a day and had planned on being at Wrenbury tomorrow (Weds.) so I was a bit put out when he insisted that we carry on to Wrenbury tonight. 9 locks and 1 lift bridge later and I was knackered! The wind had been increasing steadily all day making it hard work trying to stop the lock gates being blown open before I could get the paddles raised to fill them. We eventually moored at Wrenbury and he told me to go and get “dolled up” as he was taking me out to dinner. What a lovely surprise. We went to the Dusty Miller pub and had a really good meal, complete with champagne cocktail, red rose and chocolates.
1 comment:
You'll have to hang on to this fellow, thoroughly enjoy reading your blog - Jen.
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