Saturday, 9th October 2021

A sweetener…..

It has been heart warming getting your messages of support as I re-engage in my blog life. However the nearest we have come to water in the past week is a walk along the canal at Newbury so I thought a quick update as to where we are might save too many individual explanations!

At the end of last week Day Dream was still awaiting the arrival of a new engine and to be honest when we had heard no positive news by the weekend my heart sank a little. Knowing R wanted to leave the boat on the 9th for a week I wasn’t feeling too confident being left alone so soon. Every boat has a different feel, it’s own idiosyncrasies and it takes a while to feel at home and in control. I don’t even know if DD has a spare bed enabling a friend to come and stay to keep me company! All in all it felt better to delay our start date to after R’s return from Suffolk – 19th October. A similar date to when we set off last year but we will now only have two months to travel so have decided to abandon our trip to the K&A. Instead we hope to explore Warwick and Stratford and maybe Gloucester and the Chester ring. I have yet to look at the CRT winter closure program for this area of the network – could again be all change if a lock is out of action.

What to do with our unexpected freedom? So many choices. Staying at home wasn’t one of them. Two lodgers, three adult children, two partners, two rabbits, a hamster and a tortoise plus mum and dad didn’t seem tenable in a family house that, although was big enough for four children growing up, felt considerably smaller once half the family was well over 6ft! We are not quiet, we do not hold back on our feelings and so for harmony to reign we decided, R and I, to take a mini break. But where to go? Had to be somewhere with some petrol, but not too far away as we didn’t want to spend too long travelling. We opted on Cirencester. Partly because we have friends there we haven’t seen for over two years due to covid and we could also see my sister en route home. The added bonus being a night in Newbury so I could get my fix of looking at the narrowboats and working out where we can moor up in due course, because the K&A is on my bucket list!

Anyway, I just wanted to give a plug for Cirencester. It was a delightful place to stay. A charming, well priced Italian restaurant, well frequented for a Tuesday night, ensured we were well fed. A very comfortable, clean and friendly BnB, meant we had two mega breakfasts and access to about 40 channels on the TV! R enjoyed the local museum whilst I mooched around the varied independent shops, including a lovely craft market. Even started my Christmas shopping, horror of horrors – to think that time is coming round again and so quickly! Then in the afternoon we planned to go to an arts and craft country house which looked really interesting, until we read it closes in October for the winter! However, the weather was mild and sunny so a walk sufficed through the amazing Cirencester park. What an asset to the town. Extensive, beautiful and right on the doorstep for all the residents to get their daily exercise. It was the site of an enermous Abbey which was dissolved in the reformation. All that remains is the impressive church of St John Baptist, also well worth a visit.

En route to Newbury we stopped off in the charming town of Malmesbury although it would be a challenge for us to live there – the streets are narrow and winding and I was a little concerned we might end up restyling our car yet again! The abbey though is awesome and they have made great use of it as a community space in addition to it also being a regular place of worship. I think the way forward for many of our large town churches is to see how creatively they can use the space midweek to engage with the local people regardless of whether or not they attend the church on a Sunday. Certainly our local church is big and spacious, with great acoustics and a wonderful new sound and vision system – a safe space for quite a few people to come together knowing there is plenty of air going into the lofty rafters so hopefully covid secure! Especially with the doors open and a breeze running through although we might need a blanket on every chair to counteract the increase in gas prices!