Hello everyone, yes we are still alive. Rain man chides me for being on the boat and not blogging so I thought I'd put that right with a short state of the nation address.
Its lovely now that spring is here - five little cygnets in the marina, butterflies (brimstones and orange tips) on the towpath hedges, crab apple and blackthorn blossom everywhere and the best year for cowslips I can remember. What's not to like?
Well what winter has done is not to like. Herbie's engine took a lot of time to get going, I had to bleed the fuel right through which is a job I hate doing, then there was the boat roof to sort out. It's all very pretty mooring under a weeping willow tree, but it don't half drop a lot of stuff on the boat over the winter. Buckets of brown crumbs and shrivelled leaves clogging up the roof drains and hand rail gutters. Of course it sat there during all the wet weather and turned to a sort of mulch turning the paint black and lifting the paint here and there. Well I've cleared most of it now, but I feel a roof repaint coming on this year.
Our friends Phil and Janet joined us today and we cruised down to the Folly and back, with a suitable beer break at the pub of course. The so called potting shed at the Folly has now matured into a really attractive room full of comfortable furniture and gardening nick nacks. It would indeed be folly not to go to the Folly when passing through Napton.
This has been a short break to dewinterise the boat, but we'll be back as soon as we can.
