A bit of spit and polish, actually quite a lot!

After yesterdays cleaning of Triskaideka I decided that we should also give her a good polish before returning home, it was a lovely sunny morning, great cruising weather but we did the sensible thing and set to with the polish.  Its hard graft but the result was worth the effort.  We also met our new neighbours  and fellow moorers and without all the chatting of where everyone has been this year would have finished much sooner than we did.  I also touched up the paint on the other side so she is looking good.  One disadvantage of the satellite system we have is that the magnetic base has scratched the roof somewhat so I masked off the area and roller painted it, the result was impressive, you can't see the join, although you can see the dead flies in it which hopefully will wash off.  We have found a magnetic pad which hopefully in future should prevent further damage.

As usual Johns knee (or age) prevented him from fully pulling his weight, although he did get the hoover out after putting his pinny on.  He hoovered, I cleaned, we packed, not finishing until late afternoon but decided to go for it and travel back tonight so I have Sunday at home before being back to work.  After loading the car, disposing of the rubbish and emptying the elsan, we went through the usual check of leaving the boat for a while.  Sure we had covered all bases we hit the M1 heading north.  Two junctions later (just after the turn off) John realised he had left his driving license on the boat and he needed it on Tuesday as he is taking my car for a service and MOT and he can't have a hire car unless he has his driving license.  Next junction, round the roundabout and back to Crick.  Driving license retrieved off again, well at least we could check we had switched off all the lights!

Now home, car unloaded into garage, garage to be sorted tomorrow.

We have had a great 6 months cruising, despite the weather, we have met up with old friends and have made some new friends, and have enjoyed it so much we really did not want to come home.  One of the highlights of the trip was visiting Liverpool by boat, its a trip we both really enjoyed and would wish to repeat in the not too distant future, everybody without exception that has made this trip that we have spoken to this year has said the same.  The Leeds Liverpool scenery around Skipton is worth the graft of the locks getting there and it was lovely to see Kath & George again.  We again enjoyed our stay in Manchester, Bugsworth Basin and the Llangollen and Montgomery.  The Anderton Lift onto the Weaver was also a good new experience and our venture onto the Caldon was well worth the effort.  It would have been nice if there had been a few more boats around as we found it extremely quiet in most places.  We are now looking forward to next year when we will be venturing onto new waters to us, get the maps out Dave & Ang & Paul & Elaine :-)

This year we have travelled nearly 1000 miles, undertaken 715 locks, 108 swing bridges and 27 lift bridges and 30768 yards of tunnels.  The engine hours now stand at 1350.

We may have the odd day out/weekend out over winter and as usual John has got a few small jobs to attend to so he will be spending some time at Crick, but on the whole thats us done until 2013!

I am not at this point going to mention that event in December!

Thanks for reading our blog!

Winter home

Cleaned, polished and painted

 (pity about the scum marks along the water line)