Canal and river run side by side near Rugeley

At last! We decided that we had sat in the marina for far too long without moving. Our neighbours in 'Sanity Again' moved off on their continuing travels this morning and with the weather forecast promising dry conditions for the next few days we thought to take the chance.

After a short trip into town for some provisions we filled with water and had a bit of a tidy around to preparing the boat for movement. Just as we thought we would get going...... it started to rain. Just that horrible mizzel which makes you darn cold but doesn't really get you wet. The kettle was put on for a cup of coffee to see if it would stop.

It duly did stop so before we could change our minds we slipped the ropes and took off.

Our path took us east along the Trent & Mersey, new territory for Lyra, as on our last trip out we missed this section of canal and took the route through Birmingham instead.

There are some lovely places to moor along this part of the canal as it passes very close to the River Trent giving some great views.

We don't know how long we will stay out, it all depends on the weather, maybe 2-4 days.

Ingestre stables

Cath at Ingestre Church

Friday 35th February
Things are finally starting to move forward. The dryer once again failed, but it's an ill wind that blows nobody good. While trying to fix it I left the top of the machine off when it started to spin and there was the source of the terrible noise it had been making. I had thought that some stabiliser had come adrift underneath, but couldn't see anything obviously wrong when I looked, so had been putting up with racket for a while. From the top the cause was easily seen, one of the weights around the drum was loose so I packed the holding bolts with large washers and hey presto a quiet machine again. The dryer heater had once again given up the ghost, so a new one was ordered and fitted and once more the thing works as it should (this is the third replacement heater in 5 years).
On the heating front I managed to finally get the unit working as I wanted it to. Part of the trouble had been a wire in the wrong place on the connector, it seems I can't count properly. Once that was discovered and I had wired in the motorised valve the boat and water heating now work as intended.
Today I scraped a lot of rust off the back deck and applied some rust converter so we'll see how that works.
The other day we took the opportunity of a bit of nice weather to explore a local gem. The village of Engestre is at the end of a cul de sac lane and looks very select. It has two places of interest, a very pretty church (which we couldnt see inside because it's only open on Saturday afternoons) and an old stable block which is still in use. Picture above.

WITH A NEW COAT OF BLACK LYRA RETURNS TO THE WATER

DANIEL IS HIS USUAL HAPPY SELF

Tuesday 15^th February

Its 's been a while since the last post and things are moving on. Lyra finally came out of the water for blacking and while that was going on a new prop was fitted and some slack taken out of the rudder bottom bearing. While this was being done we had decided to go to Leeds and visit our grandson. Things didn't go quite to plan though, the boatyard didn't manage to get started with the blacking until Wednesday which put the whole thing back several days. We should have been back on board on Thursday night but as it was we ended up spending a week in Leeds because Lyra wasn't re-floated until Monday.

The weather didn't seem too bad as I set out from the slipway to return to our mooring, but suddenly the heavens opened, the wind whipped up and it started to hail with a vengeance. As I tried to manoeuvre to reverse into our slot the wind caught me and I couldn't keep her straight at all. I ended up having to nose into the mooring, a great failure. I'll turn us around when the weather improves.

Once again I've made repairs to our clothes dryer, fingers crossed, and while in Leeds I managed to source a proper switch for our land line selection and I'm in the process of installing it now.