Galadriel

It's all about timing. That's been the theme of BBC series "The Great British Year". They mean the timing of the events, the plants, the animals. You could equally apply it to the stunning success of their camera work. For myself, I'm often just too late to capture on film things that otherwise might make it onto this blog, and this is particularly true of the Tolkien-themed boats whose names I've been listing. However, for yesterday's example, Galadriel, that was probably no bad thing. It was rather small, unimpressive, and a sort of faded, rather blotchy mid-blue. The name on the side looked like it had been applied, somewhat unevenly, from a considerably under-sized eighties Letraset pack. Anything less like the ethereal vision in silky white from the books and films would be hard to imagine. However, Galadriel it was, so the owner has a soul after all and the list now reads:

Arwen Evenstar
Aragorn
Bilbo Baggins
Brandywine
Galadriel
Gandalf
Goldberry
Hobbit
Lóthlórien
Many Meetings
Shadowfax
Smaug

We did see a boat named "Precious", but I can't bring myself to think that had anything whatsoever to do with its homonym in Middle Earth, so it won't go in the list until someone shows otherwise!

As for today's timings, we have the lock (Tyrley bottom lock) where I got the timing of the approach totally wrong last year, and ended up trapped by the bywash against the opposite bank.

No bywash today, approach perfect and no alarms whatsoever. However, the timing of the encounter with almost the only boat we met coming the way left a lot to be desired.

Right in the middle of Woodseaves cutting, where the narrowness is compounded by the rocky shelf on the towpath side and the landslips and vegetation on the other. But a bit of boater's art meant we passed without incident.

As did the rest of the day. We're 2 miles north of Norbury Junction, not another soul in sight. It's a cold, cold night, but the fire is lit, we're snug, and we're not bashing too heavily on the Shroppie shelf.