Educating Daddy

Great excitement for Elissa and Sam as their dad arrived from Oslo late on Monday. Like his brothers, he'd never seen Erin Mae, so it's been a time for exploring. The children showed him the boat and then, on Tuesday, the stretch down to Wolseley Bridge and the woods around the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust centre which are brilliant for playing in. Down and back up the two locks, windlassing and pushing beams, and Chris applying his boating skills to this form of craft. All great fun.

On the way we stopped to say hello to Paul and Lynne on NB Piston Broke, still moored up south of Great Haywood. It was good to meet them, since theirs was one of the first boating blogs we came across when we started looking.

Then it was Wednesday and time for the kids to pack up (sob sob). On a windy morning we had one last trip down to Tixall Wide and back, with some interesting rope manouevres to extricate ourselves from the marina as the wind objected. Then off to Manchester for an evening flight. It's been a brilliant week with them – hopefully we'll be able to repeat it in future years.

Today we collapsed.