Author: Mary

A busy start to the day trying to beat the queue to the washing machine and succeeding! Meant I was up in time to catch the Radio 4 morning worship at 0810, which I always enjoy when awake in time! Imagine my surprise to hear that it was a broadcast from Leighton Buzzard parish church, the very church pictured on my blog yesterday.  Small world. They may have been asked because, I think I heard right, the choirister of the year is part of their choir. There certainly was some very uplifting music, a reminder that so many people reach God through collective  singing and what a hardship it has been not to be allowed to sing together or in our churches for so long. Mum’s cremation service last September was uplifted by our family being able to sing together, though apart, by the clever use of technology,  layering voices so they came together as a choir. Leighton Buzzard church had done the same this morning and it was a joyful start to the day.

Interspersed with Zoom prayers and Zoom church followed by chat  we managed to get all our chores completed including a satisfying pile of clean, dry laundry. The boat was vacuumed, cleaned, tidied and all ready for the off by midday. Having said our goodbyes to a very cheery group of narrowboaters (quite a few meandering outside because of the sunny, dry morning) R went to fill the lock as I started the engine and contemplated how I was going to exit the marina without damaging any of the smart boats surrounding me. S, our neighbour,  gave me helpful tips and a push in the right direction but at the same time a widebeam passed by and I realised he would be the happy beneficiary of R’s filled lock! Our good deed for the day! As we were in no hurry it really didn’t matter although I had quite a job keeping the boat in a straight line whilst waiting for the lock to refill. Eventually I managed to moor it along the towpath and hold it by  the midrope. There’s always a danger when waiting for a lock to fill, with the water pulling you in the direction of the gates, that you might end up straddling across the canal or gently banging in to another moored boat if one is nearby. The scenario playing out in my head this morning! Fortunately all went smoothly,  we entered and left the lock and found a mooring within sight of an Aldi! Not quite as upmarket as our Waitrose moorings but Aldi do supply some good gin!

Many more people to chat to. As the rain has eased over the past day the towpath already is drier so lots of Sunday walkers.  Opposite us, reachable by a bridge if the flooding has gone down, looks to be a lovely wooded Park. Again well enjoyed by the local walkers, especially with dogs in tow.

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The water is piping hot after the boat has moved, with the engine running for a couple of hours, so before it had chance to cool I had a relaxing bath just after lunch and then looked for my glasses – found after an half hour search and an irate husband, in the plastic bowl housing veg which lives in the bath when I’m not in it! The glasses had fallen between the veg – I knew I’d put them somewhere safe – the one thing you know about losing something on the boat – it has to be somewhere pretty close by!!

Last day in the marina today. It’s been a treat waking up to instant heat from the electric blow heater although I have missed the stove in the evening. R has had a week off from the laying and lighting of fires, cleaning out the ash and chopping up the foraged wood. The downside is that you don’t get the same cosy feel in the evenings. We also have struggled with the Internet. Very poor WiFi so no advantage having WiFi included in the marina fees. Still, the shower block has enabled us to get very clean and the Elsan hasn’t had to be used so often! Am planning to use the washing machine before we leave tomorrow but that means being in the office by 0830 when it opens – there could be a bit of a queue. Then we will fill the water tank and might even make use of the electricity to vacuum the floors and charge all the electronic devices. The other plus of being here has been the recycling facilities. I am afraid our rubbish usually has to go in a general bin as the CRT does not provide much in the way of recycling.

We only plan to go through one lock tomorrow and then moor up nearby. Our idea of mooring near to Aldi is a bit pointless whilst the wasteland between Aldi and the canal is flooded. Still we were able to walk to Aldi today via the towpath which had dried out considerably – it was just a longer way round. I spied an M&S food so went there instead thinking it might be less crowded. Whilst at the checkout I made conversation by asking the cashier how her day was going and she told me she had a bit of a dry cough. Now here’s the thing. In the past I would have sympathised and thought no more of it. Today however my mind went into overdrive and when I returned to the boat I wiped down everything I had purchased with Zoflora. Over reaction or just how we have to be in a pandemic? Alert and cautious. I do hope she is OK and it must be a bit of a nightmare for the supermarkets if their staff get a covid outbreak.

R had a Zoom meeting with the church all morning so I took the opportunity to finish my P D James novel, ‘Original Sin’. The title did not become obvious until very near the end of the book but it was a great read and I shall look out for more of her novels for a bit of escapism. The sun came out at lunchtime so we had a very pleasant, warm walk until the sun retreated and the sky turned grey. By then we were laden down with rucksacks so the walk home generated its own heat!

A Zoom quiz this evening helped to pass the time and exercise the brain cells but I think we were probably the recipients of the wooden spoon yet again! We have a free subscription to Britbox for 6 months so we watched a bit of ‘Some mothers do have’em’ which still elicited a bit of a laugh and then R found a 1980s film to watch whilst I caught up with the blog.

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What a grump I woke up in! Not helped by being awake in the night, we get up for an 8am weekly prayer meeting with our Filling Station team every Friday. The boat hasn’t had much time to warm up – my usual way of coping with the cold mornings is to stay under the duvet as long as possible! Then our internet connection was poor, which was irritating but also made it difficult to hear. Following on from this we were trying to get to grips with a new app which further irked me so I took myself back to bed for an hour in the hopes I would emerge in a kinder frame of mind. Meanwhile R decided to go off foraging for wood and I lay in bed hoping he wasn’t thinking of crossing the lockgates with a great big boulder of wood under his arm! I needn’t have fretted as he had spied the wood on yesterday’s walk so it was on our side of the towpath!

Remembering that R had mentioned yesterday the freezer needed defrosting I started on that before his return, inwardly laughing at yet another task involving water and ice! Fortunately the freezer is small and I don’t think as icy as my home freezer because within a short space of time I had managed to ping off the internal ice with the aid of a wooden spatula. Additionally, I found enough food to defrost for supper and hopefully won’t need to get to a supermarket before Sunday.

We walked along the towpath, me with clingfilm around my feet to act as a water barrier to my wellies which have cracks near my bunions! (worked well incidentally – wanted to use plastic bags but didn’t have any the right size. Not a usual purchase – plastic bags accommodating the size of a size 6 foot!) It wasn’t long before we were squelching through puddles, although drier than yesterday, but when we reached the meadow we wanted to walk across to get to Aldi (a dry run before our Sunday expedition) we were dismayed to find it totally under water with no hope of reaching the supermarket via that route. A couple on the towpath suggested we walk to the next bridge and approached Aldi from there, along the main road. This we did, which was not a problem but walking on from Aldi along the dual carriageway with a narrow grass verge and then turning into the road leading to the entrance to the marina, was a bit hairy! Especially the last 100yds or so where the bendy road had no pavements or verges, just spiky bushes poking us into the oncoming traffic. Rest assured I won’t be collecting our shopping via that route!

The couple on the towpath were very chatty and as we were heading in the same direction I asked the lady how covid had impacted her life. It was a rather sad tale of elderly parents, the father in a care home with dementia and mother living locally. Yesterday they had a Zoom call with her dad clearly confused and distressed as to why he could not be with his wife of probably 60 years plus (he’s 92) and daughter. Both parents were in tears and their daughter helpless to improve the situation. Some people with dementia have no recognition of loved ones but this gentleman clearly does and it must be so upsetting and confusing for him feeling his wife and child have abandoned him. I am passing no judgement, just recounting a very sad story that is probably repeated all over the country whilst we are in a pandemic and locked down.

My regular Friday afternoon Zoom cheered me up as it’s just so lovely to see some friends, even if it has to be virtual.

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Talk about being marooned! I thought it rained a lot in the night and this morning I was quite happy having a duvet day but by lunchtime the rain had eased so we ventured along the towpath only to findvit flooded. To such an extent that it was hard to see where the towpath ended and the canal began! So we about turned and decided to try walking along the road outside the marina carpark, the one with no pavements. I found that not to be strictly true. Going left there was a narrow grass verge. However we wanted to turn right towards LB, yet within minutes we came across flooding on the road and a few cars in difficulties. We realised we were not going to get through so we walked in the opposite direction along the grass verge. After about half a mile we reached a left hand turning down a no through road. In want of exercise we walked along until we could go no further and then about turned. The road did lead us to Church lock, the one above Grove lock where we are moored, but the towpaths were impassable. On our return journey to the boat, retreading our steps, I realised that short of moving the boat along the canal, we cannot get to any food stores until the water levels recede. Reminds me of Noahs Ark!

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Arriving back at Grove lock we met a delightful couple walking three rescue dogs. Turns out they have been at this marina a few years although they do also own a home. They are hooked on canal life. She is an artist who started teaching locally, after being approached to do so, and now teaches pupils online and they number hundreds! They are in the process of buying a wide beam which means their 68ft narrowboat is going on the market soon…….can I persuade Richard?!

I have realised that sometimes when you step off a boat onto the towpath you have few choices as to where you can go. Unless there is a bridge or lock gates straddling the canal you cannot get to the other side of the water. Sometimes on the otherside there is no towpath to walk along in any case. So it is with where we are now, but not because of a missing towpath. This is more to do with traffic and rain. The marina itself has a carpark but we have discovered that it is entered from a fairly busy, windy road, that has no pavements, so unsafe for a pedestrian to walk along. Our boat is also on the side of canal without any towpath so to go anywhere we have to walk across a set of lockgates to reach the towpath. That in itself can be tricky when you are returning from town with the weekly shop! And hampered again by slippery conditions caused by ice on really chilly days and wet on rainy days. Yesterday to ring the changes of our walk we decided on reaching the towpath to turn right, walking back in the direction we came from by boat. R thought it would be interesting to walk to the lock that is now being mended, thus causing the canal stoppage. We had only slip slided about 100yds when we decided to turn back. There was mud and puddles, that R remarked must have been similar to the trenches of WW1 – I could see why someone could very easily lose a footing and end up in the water! The poor condition is partly due to the weather but also, I think, is an indication of how many people enjoy towpath walks. The CRT is doing its best to maintain the safety of the towpaths around the 2000 miles of the canal system but as you can imagine it costs money they haven’t got. Hence why they appreciate any donation from those who enjoy walking the canal network.

With only one direction left to walk we retraced our steps and walked on in the direction of Linslade and Leighton Buzzard, thankful that the towpath into town is in much better nick, even tarmaced in places. Linslade morphs into LB but is a place in its own right and infact LB train station is actually situated in Linslade. To get a better understanding of the geography of the area we left the towpath at one of the many bridges along the way and completed an almost circular walk, taking in the Linslade area (I hesitate to call it a village because all we saw were private residences and rows of terraced houses), arriving eventually in LB by the Tesco bridge, thus able to complete our daily exercise walking back along the towpath towards our boat. On the left side of the towpath walking away from town there look to be large areas of marshes that would be great to walk in the summer months but I fear are too boggy at present so our walking choices are fairly limited.

I enjoyed some lengthy telephone conversations catching up with friends and cooked a vegetarian sausage hotpot in my electric robot contraption (basically a saucepan that heats up to different temperatures but can also be a mixer of liquidizer – very clever!) before settling down to our weekly church bible study on Zoom. Studying the wisdom of Solomon I was struck again by the story of the two new mothers, one whose baby died in the night afew days after birth, so she replaced it with the other mother’s living baby. Noticing the switch the mums argued and thus appeared before King Solomon who, after hearing their story, suggested the living baby got cut down the middle so each woman could have half. At which point the baby’s real mother declared the other woman could have him rather than he suffer and die. Of course, at that point, Solomon was able to discern who the babies real mother was and returned the baby to her. Such a chilling story but what wisdom to know how to out the pretender!

Another Vera episode (am determined now to see them all as we are at series 8 out of 10!) and bed, reading PD James ‘Original Sin’. R, who does not usually enjoy detective novels was quite gripped by this one, so I decided to read it after him. Partly so we can discuss who did it! Good to find new things to talk about when there is little dilution of each others company at present! Sharing the different aspects of our day used to enliven our conversation and I have always felt the importance of building friendships with people in addition to ones partner. For the majority, people need people, so it is of little surprise that the mental health of the nation is struggling at present in all sorts of ways. We try to engage, even if it is only a smile and a brief hallo, with anyone we pass on our walks. It may be the only interaction they get all day. And its not as if we are in a hurry!

ps Having just listened to today’s blog R said the scenario of the towpath reminded him of the choice we have of either following the Christian path in this life or walking an alternative route. Jesus did say ‘I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’ (John 14.6). An interesting parallel to contemplate.

The memory can play tricks. Yesterday when we walked along the towpath to the Globe pub, which must be about a mile or so before arriving in LB itself I really recognised very little and could not place where we had moored up previously and yet I felt certain we were near to where R had had his canal dip and that we had used a laundrette in LB to clean his clothes. So I decided to walk in again as my daily exercise and find the town centre. I don’t usually forget shops easily! Sure enough, as I got directions to the town centre I recognised the electric bike shop on the corner and then the way the walkway, without cars widens, with shops on either side and there is plenty of room for market traders on Tuesdays and Saturdays. The market had been there the last time we came but this one was much reduced, probably due to Covid essential restrictions. The traders had put 2m markings on the road so orderly queues could form, but there were not many punters, even though the stalls looked tempting. A great array of fruit and veg; an upmarket baker; a takeaway of samosas and the like, which looked delicious. I spotted a Wilko and donning mask and sanitizer headed in to replenish some hardware that was useful on the boat. One of the things we have had a bit of a struggle with is lighting. The boat lights are quite dim but we have a very useful desk lamp which we keep moving to wherever we are settled. I managed to buy a second desk lamp (although we can only use it when hooked up to mains electricity) for a fiver, which didn’t break the bank! However the bulbs were a fiver on top – brings to mind cheap printers and expensive printer ink! Faced with a wide array of bulbs I resorted to asking an assistant for help – luckily she had purchased the same lamp and knew exactly the bulbs to head for.

So LB is a pleasant English market town looking rather sad at the moment but I am sure on a sunny Saturday with the market in full swing it paints a different picture.

The afternoon cheered me greatly as I sat outside on the bow of the boat playing Trickster Bridge with the 3 girlfriends I have played bridge with for over 20 years although we haven’t been able to play online for a while for various reasons. My bridge, it turns out, was really rusty, with a few basic errors that annoyed me greatly. It’s such a good game for keeping the brain active so I don’t want to let it slip as my brain needs all the help it can get! Codewords are my other passion for brain games and a surefire way to help me fall asleep. Probably a better option than my current nightly pattern of watching an episode of the detective ‘Vera’. I have even started dreaming about murder! You may wonder why on a cold winter’s day I chose to sit outside on the boat. It was because it had turned into the most beautiful afternoon with a good smattering of blue sky and a little sun. I wrapped myself in many rugs and thanked God for the beauty around me. There is something so peaceful in watching reflections on still water.

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