Joel and poverty

Just came across this via a Twitter link. 6 year old Joel Saunders wanting to make an impact on poverty. Nothing to do with Erin Mae, but thought it worth an extra post.

Dongly things

Three's mobile broadband coverage, while a bit patchy, has generally served us well. Until yesterday. Ran out of Gb on the current SIM, so put in the new one I'd purchased before Christmas (such foresight!). Zilch. Nada. Not a dingle from my dongle. All it did was allow me to access Three's website which informed me I had no allowance left. Sounded a bit like the pocket money officer at the camp I'd attended as an 11 year old. No amount of fiddling made any difference, so today it was yet another trip into Chester (that bus pass is really earning its keep).

Two teenagers on the bus told us where to find the local Three store (which the website had been unable to do). With no receipt, and having bought the SIM card from Amazon in the first place, I rehearsed again in my mind all the arguments I was going to use to persuade them to help me out. "Hi" he said. "How can I help you?" I told him. And he got straight on the phone to customer services. I was extremely happy about this, as my own experience of talking to them is that it's quite an exercise in incomprehensibility.

Customer services um'd and ah'd and wouldn't believe it wasn't a different type of SIM that had been topped up at some point last month. Eventually our friend and his boss simply gave up, said thank you very much, put down the phone, and got me a replacement from out the back. I was well impressed. There seems to be a world of difference between the systems they employ on their help lines, and the people they emply in the stores. Long live the personal touch, common sense and trust in individual judgement!

And here's the blog post to prove it.

Fire and Water

Mesmerising, both the bright and the ripply. Today there was a lot of water and wind. Without the sun the surface of the marina was ripply but dull. Definitely a day for retreating inside, and we lit the fire (yes, even on June 7th). It glows comfortingly in the corner.

My parents had a proper fire – it was something we all looked forward to when visiting at Christmas and so on. Messy, of course. Wood and coal to bring in, ashes to clean up. But definitely worth it – letting the mind lose itself in the flicker of an evening.

Before we bought Erin Mae, my best beloved was convinced we should have a wood-burner. I wasn't so sure – a bit concerned about safety when the children came to stay. I'm very glad she won.

A little piece of Cornwall

Today, the bus arrived and carried us, yet again, into Chester. We wanted some good coffee, a proper Wi-Fi connection and a modicum of peace, and it was the West Cornwall Pasty Company that came up trumps. Just wish I'd had a camera for the surfboards, fast tide warnings and ancient photographs that bedecked the walls of the upstairs accommodation. My best beloved went off to M&S and Waterstone's while I did some college work via the internet. Then we had pasties (handcrafted in Cornwall, all the potatoes grown in Falmouth, only Davidstow cheese, etc, etc – even the lad who took our cash came from beyond Penzance). Our oldest, who lives in Falmouth, would no doubt argue that anything but a Philps is a deception and why would you want a fast food Cornish Pasty in Chester anyway? But we didn't need anything else to eat until we got back to the boat well after 5, courteously dropped off by the driver right outside the gate.

Today, it was also as wet as any Cornishman could wish for. The heavens opened regularly and threatened to flood the pavements as we waited for the bus home. The appalling forecast affects our discussions about when to leave Tattenhall. We want to get to Middlewich for the Folk and Boat Festival at the end of next week. It will take us only two or three days of leisurely travel, and we don't want to do it 'midst storm and alarm, but we're getting itchy feet. Perhaps it will come down to when the electric runs out!

Old Ma's Café

With the sky as bleak as ever, we went and waited for the bus into Chester. And waited … and … and eventually decided it wasn't coming. So we walked to the Manor Farm Shop instead – a nice mile to work off yesterday's stiffness. And that, of course, required some caffeine and carbs to set us up for the return journey, in the attached "Old Ma's Café". Definitely a Ma, but not a very old one, who came through from the shop to serve us. So we got chatting about the name, and eventually a slightly more senior Ma came through to join us. She blamed the name on her son-in-law, but didn't seem too upset by it.

Suitably fortified, we extended our walk into Tattenhall village to see the sights. A nice NISA supermarket provided some sun-dried-tomato baguettes, creamy Stilton, a wonderfully mature Camembert and some locally roasted ham, and we walked home via another local landmark, the Ice Cream Farm, which was packed out with families enjoying the animals and activities (and the ice cream). By the time we got back to Erin Mae it was almost as late for lunch as yesterday. But the food was fabulous. There's not much can match this Ma's café.

One fine day

… in the merrie month of May a woefully wet June Jubilee weekend. After a suitably somnolent Sunday to recover from Saturday's exertions, with our attention divided between tennis from Paris, the pageant from the Thames and the rain on the windows, today beckoned bright and clear. Beeston castle was the target. We're getting to know this landmark, having passed it once on the way to Chester, and twice on Saturday's day trip. It's a constant feature of the view from the marina, sitting on a sandstone bluff that rises sharply from the Cheshire plain, at roughly 11 o'clock from where Erin Mae is pointing at this moment. Looking deceptively close…

Late afternoon sort of walk, we thought, so we set out at about 3.15 with an extremely late sandwich lunch in hand. Down the towpath towards The Shady Oak and Wharton's lock. This was a new test for my best beloved's artificial bit, not helped at all by yours truly picking the wrong route out of the marina, straight over a locked gate. That negotiated, she set a brisk pace – at the end of the day the Garmin told us that Erin Mae probably wouldn't have done it any quicker, in spite of my stopping to take photos of this and that, including…

These tiny field mice were so careless of their own safety, I nearly stepped on them. With no experience of such things, I don't have a clue whether they were relative babies, or if they're always that size – smaller than the top half of my thumb.

Well, we made Beeston Castle after four miles, had an interesting coffee break chatting to Edward III (one of the team putting on a medieval event team this weekend), and then hit the trail again. On the way home we stopped and chatted with Steve and Hazel on NB Lodestone, another Aqualine built around the same time as Erin Mae. It was interesting to see how they'd handled some of the questions we ourselves had had. Nice to meet you, guys!

But when we got back to the field mice, what should we find but one of them lying in the grass squashed flat as a pancake. So easy to do if you don't take quite enough notice of things around you, where you're going, what you're doing. Hm… yet another life lesson in there somewhere.

Day tripper

Grey, overcast sky. Drizzle in the air. Early start, late finish. Didn't matter at all. We had David and Jo, Lewis (13) and Charis (11) coming for the day. How much could we fit in?

We picked them up at Waverton. First thing (after coffee) was for the junior crew members to learn some knots. Then we started down the long pound towards Tattenhall, Lewis and Charis taking to steering like the proverbial. They both seemed to have a really natural touch on the tiller bar, judging some nice lines round corners and through the bridges, though neither had been boating before. They also learned the etiquette of passing moored boats, with a mile or more of them to negotiate on the way. But it was also a great opportunity for narrowboat name spotting.

Knot practice and an introduction to mooring pins as we tied up for pizza, followed by a short stretch to the Shady Oak for ice cream. After that it was on to Wharton's lock and the art of the windlass. The winding hole was half a mile further on, and negotiated successfully with Charis on the tiller and Lewis on the engine control. Then all the way home, with pasta bake at the end of the day.

Wildlife along the route was typical for this time of year, waterfowl broods at various stages. Some miniscule moorhen chicks shepherded by anxious mothers, and cygnets getting a ride on their parents' backs. The balance between providing security and encouraging independence in the young is one faced by all generations. Perhaps what we did on this trip made a contribution. But, mostly, we had a great day together.