Today the sun was shining and at last we were able to wear shorts and tee shirts, shame we only have one more day on holiday!
The canals are now run by the Canal and River Trust (rather than British Waterways as it used to be) and at all the difficult points they have volunteers who turn out to help stupid boaters like us and to try and stop us injuring ourselves or others. I don’t know if these volunteers get any reward for their work, we did give the first one we came across, who helped us for an hour, a bottle of wine but the next one turned our offer down and the rest just seem to enjoy being outside helping people. It highlights the camaraderie of the canal users so you wonder why the miserable buggers are so miserable (it is probably only 10% but you do remember them).
The lady in the picture above helped Gill manage the lock gates, she was 10 miles from home, one volunteer we met in Manchester was 30 miles from home so quite a commitment to turn out each week. It is a very welcome sight to see someone at a lock wearing the blue tee shirt and a red life jacket and in this case saved Gill doing the jump of death which normally has to carry out to cross the lock.
There has been a great deal written in the newspaper about the virus hot spots amongst the communities of Indian and Pakistani heritage, the suggestion is that the message about social distancing etc are not getting through. We thought we had better do a little research on your behalf so last night we had our first Indian meal of the trip (had Nepalese, Chinese and Thai but not Indian). After all we do like to live dangerously.
It was like going back to 2019, no “wait to be seated” message or sanitiser at the door, no markings on the floor, the waiter handed us the cutlery and no masks were worn by anyone, whilst the restaurant was not busy all the tables were close together and they had tablecloths. The only concession to the new rules was he made a note of our names and telephone numbers.
It was a very nice meal, lets hope with only 5 people per 100,000 in Shropshire infected the five don’t work or eat in the Jaipur in Market Drayton.