A nervous moment last night when
I took the dogs out for their final tiddles. The Labradors stay on the leads
now, after several late night incidents when they have taken themselves off for
an explore in the dark. But Ruby doesn’t need this, she doesn’t move very fast,
and she prefers to follow us at her own pace. It was very cold, and after we
had walked out and back Bridget still hadn’t been, so we walked on past the boat
in the other direction. After a while I looked back to check Ruby was still
behind us, and saw to my horror that she had clearly decided that enough was
enough and she had started to go aboard on her own – all I could see was the
violet light on her collar as she started to totter up the slippery gangplank.
I hurried back as fast as I could without losing the other three but Ruby
reached the top of the gangplank and hopped off the end, happily onto the stern
deck rather than into the canal. At that point I decided that Bridget could
hold it in for the night, and we all went down below to bed.
Happily she was able to do so,
and we had another undisturbed night, and got up at 8am. The night had been
very cold, and there was a hard frost on the stern rails, as well as the grass
on the towpath. The ropes were frozen hard when I came to unmoor, though that
was more than two hours later, as we didn’t have very far to go. We cruised up
about a mile and a half to Nantwich, and into the basin where the Navigation
Narrowboat Company have their workshops. We tied up on a finger mooring, but
then we realised we needed to be stern in to allow the dogs to get off. Matthew
from the NNC showed us where to put her, so I had to reverse out, turn and
reverse back in – happily it was a calm day and I was pleased with how it went.
Kate had come in Loulie’s car to
collect us, so we loaded the dogs and as much luggage as we could and set off
home. It was another lovely winter’s day with clear blue skies and bright sun,
though obviously very cold, and we felt a real regret at leaving the canal for
dry land. It will be three months or more before we can get back on the water
again, and we can’t wait.
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