Greetings from a village called Birstall which is a few miles north of Leicester. We have stopped here as we spotted a pub which was open and doing food, after last nights disappointment in Loughborough we thought we had better seize the opportunity to eat food in a cold garden whilst we could.
As you can see Gill needed a thick jacket and a woolly hat even though it was only 6.30pm, somehow it is not the same as eating out in Greece. The food was quite good which made up for the not very good full English breakfast in a fancy marina this morning where I embarrassed myself with some very dodgy steering into a difficult mooring space. I blamed the wind and I did notice someone else making a mess of it.
This morning we visited the Bell Foundry mentioned in yesterdays blog, it is called Taylors and is still casting bells in the traditional way. The museum was closed of course but they did let us have a peek inside the factory so I could take this picture.
We are fairly relaxed about our boating and don’t get excited about going on big rivers or past weirs, some canal boat owners seem very timorous. Yesterday we were chatting to a couple who were admiring my steering (I doubt it), they said they have been planning a long trip on the canals for the past three years and hope to go next year. It turned out they already have a boat but don’t seem to use it, last year the excuse was covid, the year before it was a hip operation, they will be too old soon and won’t have gone anywhere, very strange but there seem to be a lot of boaters like that.
Caution - Fall from height - Is this an order?
Tomorrow we are motoring through the centre of Leicester and then on towards Market Harborough which is our target for the weekend.