The Odyssey 2009: Day 18

Monday 4th May Radford Semele

Serene moorings at Radford Semele

We had a very quiet night at the mooring and we were very reluctant to get moving in the morning.  By moving I don’t mean moving the boat – we had reached our weekend destination leaving us a day free for DIY.

The moorings at Radford Semele are really very pleasant. Richard heroically got up, but the rest of us showed little interest in joining him. His job of the morning was to cycle to Leamington Spa station, catch a train to Banbury and drive back to collect us. He was pleased to report that the car had been fine at the station car park in Banbury. The journey from Banbury had taken us 2 days, the train back was 19 minutes.

I almost got up. I planned to take all the bedding (including dog beds) off the boat for washing this week so I stripped the linen off our mattress before Richard folded the bed away. But I wasn’t ready for the day and had an extra hour’s sleep cuddled up to Lou on the sofa – I don’t think she was very impressed but she is a good cuddler!

I’d managed to get dressed by the time Richard came back and we settled down to some domestics. We’d partly been stung into action by the sight of so many boaters doing maintenance on their own craft yesterday.

Richard fitted extra locks and then ran a cable through to the batteries ready to connect to a smartgauge. He got himself into the engine compartment (not that easy when you are on the large side) then gradually wriggled in further over the counter as he clipped the cable in, which left him with the interesting dilemma of how to get out of that position 🙂 He also emptied out the bilges – we still get a bit of a leak into our domestic bilge if we overfill the water tank so that is another area for Richard to squeeze into. The engine compartment had a bit of rainwater and a cup full of diesel sloshing around but that leak is fixed, or so Richard hopes.

In the meantime, I sorted out the cover for our guest mattress, vacuum-packed the guest duvets and pillows and then tackled the big job of clearing the fluff and other accumulated debris from under the sofa. Lou insisted on supervising from her perch on top of the sofa and was unimpressed as I slid it around the floor so I could reach every crevice.

We decided not to eat lunch on board – we always find it hard to drag ourselves away and going hungry was a good way to persuade us to pack up and go by 1.30pm. The washing pile was quite awesome – the bag of assorted dog beds was so heavy I could barely lift it. But it wasn’t a long walk to the car, parked neatly on the verge by the bridge.

Off we went, hoping that Indigo Dream would be unmolested this week. We got home by 4pm and the entire crew collapsed exhausted. For me and Lou it’s just the fresh air and stimulation but the boys had earned their rest after all the cycling/running they’ve done over the weekend.