The absolute highlight of today was our takeaway roast dinner! Not only did it taste delicious but we sat at a table with a beautiful view, just warm enough to sit outside. The twenty minute walk from the canal readied our appetite but I have to say I wolfed my meal down, whilst it was hot and just from the sheer joy of a full roast dinner. Why all the fuss I can hear you saying? Surely I can cook a roast on the boat? I probably could but roasts have always been one of my least favourite meals to prepare. A link between church duties and then precise timing to achieve a perfect Sunday roast – too much pressure! My favourite Sunday’s are always the ones when we get invited out to Sunday lunch! I have so many memories of taking our growing family to R’s parents and being fed the most amazing meat but not many vegetables, compared to my mum who, when I was growing up, gave us about 7 different vegetables every Sunday with a small portion of meat. Sunday lunch at both houses always ended up with a great pudding and then groaning all afternoon from over indulgence! R’s mother was always very particular about crying in the dining room which made every Sunday lunch an ordeal whilst one of our children was still baby or toddler stage. I could never guarantee they weren’t going to have a meltdown over something or other and there was a zero tolerance policy. Once a child cried we were ordered to take it out of the dining room! That’s about the only rule R’s mother ever fussed about. Fine for a toddler to take all the pots and pans from a deliberately accessible cupboard in the kitchen and make as much noise as they pleased, banging them together!We regularly had Sunday lunch with two other friends who made excellent roasts, so I never had to!
The weather was surprisingly mild for March and it was a delightful journey along the Oxford canal towards The Folly pub. The canal is very windy with quite a few old narrow humped bridges to negotiate. The canal has a much more rural feel to it than the GUC and all the locks are narrow, just wide enough for one narrowboat so it feels more manageable somehow. We moored up at almost the identical spot of our first night aboard, back in October, when son G and his girlfriend were with us. We had a great evening at The Folly pub in the garden, around a firepit. The next day we retraced our steps to Braunston and embarked on our epic trip on the GUC!
So much hot water (and realising there’s a watertap tomorrow) I couldn’t resist a bath so by 5pm I was wrapped in a dressing gown with my towel underneath. A little later R remarked that it looked like the sunset would be lovely and we might see it better further along the towpath. With little regard to what I was wearing (sunsets go in an instant!) we were off down the towpath- what a sight! Luckily the other boaters were safely shut down for the night or they may have got a shock seeing this semiclad woman rushing along the towpath, camera in hand. Infact the sunset was a little disappointing- it didn’t live up to its earlier promise.
Songs of Praise with some stirring hymn choices followed by a very fun Zoom with M and J. We go back a long way with them – M was responsible for R and I meeting at a party in her house where a lot of us managed to scottish dance in really quite a small space in a basement cellar. Having arrived too early for the party along with another bloke, R and he were sent away to find a pub and return later. 11pm, a few beers inside them from a long pub crawl, they joined the party and the rest is history, so they say! TWO episodes of Endeavour – I did feel rather guilty, but the first one ended on a cliff hanger so we just had to check all was going to be OK and then, before we knew it, we had only 20 minutes left of the second episode so we watched until the end! We are regressing to our teenage years!
NarrowboatTLC 