Catch Up Blog

 It’s been a long time since my last blog so I though I would do a little catch up blog to let you know a little of what we’ve been up to since Christmas.  

 We had 2 weeks at Swarkestone and then moved to Weston-on-Trent.  We paid for a winter mooring here so that we were close to family and during this time we totally emptied and decorated our house ready for rental.

 Just as the time came to move again lockdown happened.  Covid 19 meant that once more we had an extra long mooring at Weston.  

We were lucky during the lockdown time as neither of us were poorly and we had lovely company.  The boaters that we moored with were amazing and have become good friends.  The hardest part for us was being unable to spend time with our daughter and family.  However, we just kept counting our blessings that we were two of the lucky ones, there were so so many worse off than us.

Anyway, we kept ourselves busy and entertained during lockdown.  The weather was fantastic for most of it and here’s some of the things we got up to.

We took the wood panels out of our hatch doors and sanded off all the rust, treated the rust and repainted them inside.

The wood panels in our doors were rotten at the bottom so we had new ones made by our very talented neighbour and friend, Zak of Big Mouse Little Mouse, Loughborough.

 Zak also made us a new spice rack and a unit for our tea, coffee, sugar and cling film.  

So pleased with our new units 

I bought a new hat, hand-made by my lovely neighbour Lorraine, who is a boat trader called The Mad Hatter, who was moored next to us with her husband Mark (The Diesel Wizard) who is to blame for getting us all into home-brewing!  

Hand-made by The Mad Hatter Home Brewing

I finally finished one of my cross-stitch projects and made it into a cushion.  I also learned how to crochet granny squares and made bread (I had actually managed to purchase bread flour).

We managed to have a socially-distanced camp fire and also celebrate Mark’s birthday which was fab.

Paul (again with the help and guidance of Zak) installed 3 new solar panels on Hang Loose.

 I did some online shopping from The Hippie Boat - oh and dyed my hair purple!!!

As lockdown eased a little we managed to try paddle boarding, thanks to Em and Zak.

We had a couple of socially distanced visits from my lovely random friends and also six of us had a socially distanced get together for Janine’s 50th birthday.

It was Chan’s birthday during lockdown and we managed to see her briefly on her birthday - so hard not to be able to hug her and spend some proper time with her.

 I started growing some veg, including lettuce, spinach, rocket and carrots - you will see in later blogs how they get on!

 Our friends Nige, Tracey and Sam came for a walk with us and we also met up for a walk at Calke Abbey once lockdown had eased and another great thing about lockdown was the weekly zoom quizzes with Loz, Jack, Chan and Ross.

So ... that’s a little catch up of some of the things we have been doing.  

We are now cruising again!