What’s this all about?

Well this is the start of a blog about the travels of Sue & Richard together with greyhounds Blue and Lou on the narrowboat Indigo Dream. We have never written a blog before nor do we read that many ……

No travelling today thanks to the incompetence of our home insurance company meaning that we have to delay starting off by a few days. Probably just as well as Richard has too much work to do and we can do with a bit of time getting prepared.

So our summer journey is from Engineers Wharf in Northolt to Lechlade then Stratford then Gloucester. Not sure which way we will go back, possibly via Tardebigge which will make our journey 419 locks and just under 500 miles [Or so the excellent canalplan.org.uk tells us]. We do the first bit in a 2 week solid chunk starting, well whenever Royal & Sun Alliance get their act together, *sigh*

Richard spent a relaxed afternoon at Engineers Wharf working on the boat, well working in between talking to other boaters. The boat is not quite due a service but good to get it done before we go. Cold water system disinfected and flushed (2 bottles of Milton in a part full tank left for 40 minutes then took about 40 minutes to flush). We have a toilet tank the size of a small boat so that got emptied and flushed a few times. Boat definitely much higher in the water! Oil changed, air filter changed and our various fuel filters all changed. No water trapped in the filters so thanks to Diesel Lizzie for having nice clean fuel.

Meanwhile Sue spent the afternoon in the vets. We have not been there for at least 3 weeks so they must have been worried that their new car fund was not growing as it should. Fortunately Blue obliged by running into something and getting a nasty tear on one side. Our greyhounds need a trip to specsavers. That said Blue had eaten only an hour before so needed to be stapled without being knocked out. The brave lad took it without a whimper. Having survived that ordeal he is now full of beans but on mandatory lead only exercise for a while. The local rabbits are safe, well possibly less safe as our duo won’t be chasing them for a few days. The dogs are still blisteringly fast but we have yet to save any money on dog food.

Not worked out yet how to upload photos so here is a link to a photo of Blue:

http://www.greyhound-data.com/d?showpic=892497&time=1197195520

The equally accident prone Lou is here:

http://www.greyhound-data.com/d?showpic=980824&nm=2&time=1197195514