Day 1 - Hilperton to Seend Cleeve
Monday 29th April
As is our custom crew arranged to meet in Trowbridge at a gigantic Tesco superstore for our pre cruise shop and as it had a cafe, a lunch to keep us going to our expected evening feast. Some crew members took this to the extreme with large breakfasts but there is a no blame culture on our boats so Brian and Paddy will not be identified.
The rest of us just had a sandwich and coffee. Then on to do the usual shop for the week with essentials such as wine, beer and Guinness. To balance this we did also buy some 50 hot cross buns - well on the basis of how long they were offered during the week for snacks it seemed at least that number. We had also decided that this year we wouldn't ask Garry to provide a full English breakfast with tomatoes, eggs, bacon, sausage, mushrooms, beans and fried bread as for 8 and with limited cooking space this was becoming daunting. Instead Garry was insistent he'd offer bacon baps and for a bonus a fried egg to top them off. So he insisted in our shop on buying two dozen eggs - but more on that later!!
So off to the boatyard where we met Roger who'd driven straight there from Epsom. We found our allotted craft making a reacquaintance with "Snowy Owl" the boat from our adventure eight years previously.
We sat through the 10 minute DVD on Lock safety and procedures but in view of our "experience" they didn't make us endure the full monty of the movie on canal holidays. A quick run through from an engineer and we were ready to motor East towards out first evening hostelry in the village of Seend Cleeve. As our boat was actually in the yard facing the Bath direction and we wanted to go the other way on our first day, it was extremely fortunate the engineer offered to turn us as it involved reversing several hundred yards to the entrance of a marina to turn. An event he struggled to do so thank goodness he didn't leave it to us.
The rest of us just had a sandwich and coffee. Then on to do the usual shop for the week with essentials such as wine, beer and Guinness. To balance this we did also buy some 50 hot cross buns - well on the basis of how long they were offered during the week for snacks it seemed at least that number. We had also decided that this year we wouldn't ask Garry to provide a full English breakfast with tomatoes, eggs, bacon, sausage, mushrooms, beans and fried bread as for 8 and with limited cooking space this was becoming daunting. Instead Garry was insistent he'd offer bacon baps and for a bonus a fried egg to top them off. So he insisted in our shop on buying two dozen eggs - but more on that later!!
So off to the boatyard where we met Roger who'd driven straight there from Epsom. We found our allotted craft making a reacquaintance with "Snowy Owl" the boat from our adventure eight years previously.
We sat through the 10 minute DVD on Lock safety and procedures but in view of our "experience" they didn't make us endure the full monty of the movie on canal holidays. A quick run through from an engineer and we were ready to motor East towards out first evening hostelry in the village of Seend Cleeve. As our boat was actually in the yard facing the Bath direction and we wanted to go the other way on our first day, it was extremely fortunate the engineer offered to turn us as it involved reversing several hundred yards to the entrance of a marina to turn. An event he struggled to do so thank goodness he didn't leave it to us.
Sadly alcohol already seems to have materialised.....
and there were kamikaze ducklings
Paddy hadn't transgressed so he wasn't walking the plank....
a few swing bridges..
Locks
and weird traffic controls....
before a real problem....
ok how do we get past this?
That's the way to do it!
And then an uneventful final hour on to our evening mooring
and setting for dinner
A pub we had visited eight years before famous for an incident with orange cider. Only one member of the crew repeated that experience.
The food this time was excellent, the home made pies were a sight to behold.
Why are you hiding Brian?
Although one crew member did struggle with his jumper......
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