Lyra's Travels

Brindley Place at night

Tuesday 21^st August

A lovely day! The weather has been really good and according to those people at the met office it's going to be nice tomorrow as well.

I took a walk into the heart of the city this morning to buy some aerial cable because the one fitted on the boat has failed. There is a break in the inner conductor and finding it would mean chopping it shorter and shorter so the best thing is to just buy some more. We still haven't tried out the new satellite dish as our mooring doesn't have site of the satellite. It'll probably be a couple of days before we try it.

This afternoon I went back into town with the camera and got a few pics of the place. They really do have some lovely buildings around here, and they are still put up huge municipal projects. However I hear on the news that the council is in financial straights, and looking around you can see why. But the results are wonderful.

Tonight we went out for dinner at an Italian restaurant called Strada. Very nice it was too. Later I took the camera out and got some pics of the area at night.

Wednesday 22^nd September

Not a very good night! Could have been worse though. A couple of gangs of drunks ripped through the area around midnight leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. All we got were a few bangs on the side of the boat and our middle rope pulled out a thrown across a lamp post. Apparently they smashed a lot of ornaments around the area, and tried to set fire to one of the lock beams.

This morning we visited the museum where there is an exhibition of the Staffordshire Hoard at present. Some of the articles are stunning. To say the work was carried out in “The Dark Ages” the workmanship is magnificent.

Later on we moved the boat, only a few hundred yards because our 48 hrs were up on that mooring. We've moved down to the 14 day moorings near Sheepcote Bridge. We were going to the pictures tonight but when I went to book tickets despite the fact that they advertise the film, Salt, it isn't playing, the other one we may have gone to see was The Expendables, but once again they advertise it, but it's not actually showing. Tomorrow will move on, probably to Merry Hill, where there is a huge shopping mall and good moorings.