Wednesday 2 August
Hungerford
Rosie, Tom and I have spent most of the day on the boat. This summer is proving a bit of a conundrum, weather-wise. Rosie and I don’t have too many problems as we tend to wear our furcoats come rain or shine; Leigh and Tom and most other humans appear to be wearing shorts and t-shirts one minute, then waterproofs and wellies the next. It must be rather annoying for them.
Most of today has been a wet-sandwich kind of day. Heavy downpours, sheets of drizzle, with a little bit of dry-weather in between. Rosie and I have had our usual four walks – if we don’t get these I get really grumpy. On each walk we just about avoided wearing our Barbour-type coats, but when Tom went to meet Leigh, her sister Pam and her mum (Iris) for lunch he ended up rather drenched.
Pam and Iris drove down to visit today with the hope of having a mooch around Hungerford – it is a lovely little market-town – but the rain put the dampers on that. They didn’t let it spoil the day (remember, they are Brits and weather is something that Brits simply take in their stride). All three women enjoyed looking around some of the very-individual shops here. Next: M and S: Debenhams: New Look: eat your hearts out!
The super-interesting shops providing a really relaxed shopping experience. One thing that caught their eye was the hunting/fishing/shooting department in a ‘we sell everything from books to clothes to homeware to …guns’. All three remember the shocking incident back in 1987 when a deranged man shot dead about sixteen people in Hungerford. I guess this had stuck in their minds because when they used to visit relatives in Bracknell from Redditch the old route would take them through Hungerford. When the tragedy was reported it resonated with them. Also gun crime is not common in Blighty – even nowadays – and I hope it never gets to the stage where it is!
Lunch at the Hungerford Arms is to be recommended. Good food, excellent sizes portions and very friendly service. After lunch the women took another stroll around just a couple of shops and then Pam and Iris left for Redditch.
Leigh decided she needed to catch up on some pressing work-related-stuff so settled down at the computer and Tom took us for a quick walk before settling down to read his book and peruse the map for our next move.
Early evening saw Rosie, Leigh and I taking a walk down the tow-path to a rather beautiful church. The green verges were glistening with droplets of rain, the bells were ringing out, canal boats looked cosy and a kingfisher flew right past us showing us a flash of vivid blue and his red breastandtummy. Bliss!
Woofs, Martha x
Tuesday 1 August
Great Bedwyn to Hungerford
A bitofaslog is how Leigh would describe this stretch of the Kennet and Avon canal. There are numerous locks. Locks she can cope with…but on the K & A every lock seems to be different. Leigh was warned of this by a couple who were moored near us in Bristol (that seems an age ago, although it’s only a couple of weeks). Deep-locks, slow-filling or slow-emptying locks, leaking-locks, faulty mechanisms – you name it, they are all on the K & A. Believe it or not the water levels are down too so passing other boats (especially wide-beams) can mean you easily ground the boat or scrape the bottom. I only scrape my bottom if I have a problem with my anal glands but that’s another story. Yelp!
Don’t get me wrong, it is a pretty stretch of canal and luckily we shared most of the locks (they are double locks along here). the first ‘sharers’ were a crew of four so this really helped. What didn’t help was when one of them started cooking bacon. Leigh could smell the aroma floating out of the boat’s side hatch and soon decided that we needed to moor us so that she could cook some bacon and have a quick sandwich herself. She told me she, ‘Needed the energy’. After lunch and a walk we set back off. Just as Leigh was working the first postlunchlock she noted a boat following us. As it is customary on the canals we waited for them to enter the lock with us (saves water) and Leigh chatted to one of the crew – a girl of around twenty something . She told Leigh she was helping her friend, who had only had the boat two days and was intending to live aboard in London. The owner of the boat (also about twenty something) told Leigh she had never steered into a double lock with another boat before; Leigh said she had, ‘made a supersmooth job of it’, which I guess is her way of boosting the young woman’s confidence. She’s like that, Leigh – but it was true, the girl did do well!
Woofs, Martha x
Monday 31 July
Pewsey to Great Bedwyn
Leaving Pewsey we saw a second White Horse over to our right. I am starting to think these are breeding. When I checked online I could see that there are several white horses in Wiltshire; not all are medieval, in fact some are quite recent. Nevertheless they are impressive.
Great Bedwyn is a lovely little village although very, very, quite people-wise. We took a mid-evening stroll around the place and, apart from one pair of walkers (and dog and their human), didn’t see anyone. The village store is rather unusual with several head-stones alluding to people be interned there. This place is opposite the church – beautiful in the soft red light of the evening – but I still think it is all rather bizarre.
My humans were quite surprised by the pub being closed (Great Bedwyn is not a massive village, but it’s much bigger than a hamlet); you would think on a lovely summer evening, in the middle of school holidays, that it would be open. It was a good job Leigh had cooked a lovely pasta-dish as soon as we had moored up at Great Bedwyn; Tom had told her the pub did take-away pizza and she was almost tempted, but when we reached the life-less pub she said, ‘I’m so, so, glad I cooked tonight.’
We did have a rather long journey along the canal today; Leigh worked an awful lot of locks (fourteen) which were well-spaced out – meaning she has been either walking or labouring all day, into the evening. No wonder she had to eat virtually on-arrival. Physical work and excercise takes a good amount of energy.
A highlight of the day was passing a canal-dwelling with a table and honesty box outside, on which were several plants of Greek Bush Basil. I just wish I could encapsulate the fragrance within this text to share it with you. It is delicious. Leigh purchased a plant and – as you might guess – added some of the basil to her tomato and vegetable sauce which she made to go with the pasta for supper.
Woofs, Martha x
Sunday 30 July
Pewsey
Leigh went for a run this morning. She only ran two-and-a-half kilometres but was pleased with her time of sixteenpointfive minutes. Having said that she told me ‘I need to slow down and run further, Martha’ so let’s see whether she does. Letting you in on a secret, she is struggling to run lately. No motivation! I think she prefers running with a group. No chance of that on this N.B. Leigh. Tom and Rosie just do not ‘do running’. Yelp!
Cleo drove over from Cheltenham to meet my humans for lunch and then helped Leigh to shop online for some new ‘decktypetrainers’ with non-slip soles. Her usual footwear on cruising-days is a pair of Converse, but after the ‘jump off the boat quick’ experience the other day (which she had to do in her gold-ballerina-slipper type indoor footwear) made her realise she needs something foolproof that she can slip on in a nano-second. Deciding she didn’t want to pay post and packing meant she ordered a couple of other items too! On-line shopping is a tad too easy I reckon.
Leigh exchanged a few words with a guy today – boy was she grumpy. Walking Rosie and me along the tow-path is a bitofachallenge because we need space. However, most other dog-owners are understanding of this fact and when they see Leigh hiding behind a tree or standing as far back from the path as possible they thank her and walk swiftly on. A Welsh woman had her staffie off lead, the dog approached us with it’s back hairs standing up and Leigh said, ‘My dogs are not good with other dogs’. The woman apologised and called her dog back. Fair enough. Within a few minutes a guy with a sort of German Shepherd/Husky cross (off lead) walked towards us. Leigh explained again, ‘My dogs are not good with other dogs which is why I’m hiding in the bushes’. His reply? If they have a go she’ll have a good go back. This reply was not acceptable to Leigh at all. What stupidity on his behalf. Why would you not simply call your dog and hold its collar to allow all dogs a bit of space? Now, I guess he thought he was being macho, and, having the bigger dog, thought his dog was not at risk. However, if his dog had gone for us and either Rosie or I caught the dogs jugular and the dog bled to death would he still have been so obtuse, rude, or macho?
Leigh bumped into him later – without us – and ‘explained’ her feelings towards him. Yelp, Yelp, Yelp! She takes no prisoners.
Leigh loves all dogs and all breeds. She tells me, ‘It’s the owners that are rude, stupid and blinking horrible, Martha’. It’s true. It’s the same with doggy-doo-doo’s; we rely on our owners to pick it up. If you ever step in some please don’t blame us canines, blame the irresponsible owners.
Woofs, Martha x
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