Sunday 24 May 2015 – Cruising on the Trent and Mersey Canal

 

This is a short entry to report back on our ‘wind-down’ from the TGO Challenge, by way of a barge trip. We joined the usual gang – Robert, Lyn, Louise, Gerry, Chris and Stuart (minus Roger who was attempting the LDWA ‘100’ event, he did 89 miles) for the last full day of their three day trip from Etruria. 

There’s an annotated slideshow here. Click on the first image then click on ‘slideshow. 

Here’s the area we were in – the Professionals (Sue and I were just visitors) sailed from Weston to the centre of Stoke during the day.

Stuart had produced a huge slab of shortbread. We ate it all. There was lots more food.

 

Louise spent some time trying to drive the vehicle – you can just spot her head – and Robert obtained photographic evidence of a rare occasion when she managed to get the boat straight. 

 

(Just joking!)

Buttercups and daisies lined the towpath. Typical English countryside.

 

We passed this home that used to be owned by our family and which brings back happy childhood memories. I remember spending time here one Christmas, sleeping top to toe in a bed with my cousins. The living room was home to a pianola on which we played music by way of perforated tapes.


Chris (‘Photographer’) produced a microscopic tripod that was used to capture the ambience of the occasion by way of a self-timed photo!

As the day progressed, the sun came out and the late afternoon light was lovely.

 

Robert and I finished up by running 5 km as part of the process of getting our respective cars into the correct places, and whilst it was a leisurely day, my Garmin gadget did clock up over 17 km of walk/run activity during its course! 

The slideshow is here. Click on the first image then click on ‘slideshow’.
 

That’s it for now. I’m returning to trying to catalogue our TGO Challenge pictures, to which I’m putting links from the daily postings that I made during the course of the Challenge. I’m currently up to ‘Day 1’ so there’s lots more to do!

 

Note: I’ve battled for hours on Windows Live Writer (WLW) to send this posting. It seems that Google may have done something that affects the ability to post using WLW, but they will probably blame Microsoft. In the meantime my playing with the settings, uninstalling and re-installing etc may have upset things as well. The Blogger interface is truly awful, which is why this posting may look like a mess when it eventually gets through as a result of lots of cutting and pasting and indeterminate sizing of images and the failure of the software to left-align or produce a consistent type size. Moreover, there seem to be issues with images not appearing on some of my postings; if that happens to you try to refresh the screen and they may appear. Ho-hum.