Friday 10 Aug 2012 Dog in a Doublet

First job of the day was to service the BBQ, we may get to use it again sometime this year, it only needed a new handle and half a dozen pop rivets.

We set of just before 11 am upstream to meet “Lord Toulouse” who was coming down to the Middle Level and Ouse. Sure enough our paths crossed about a mile below the next lock so we turned and run down with them.
It was nice to see a polite notice informing us the bank was private and that mooring was not allowed unlike some of the “Keep Out” “No Trespassing” ones we come across. Politeness costs nothing.

Magic is not at all well this morning, its old age as he is well over 15 now, so we have decided to head back home and take him to the vet. We are booked for Stanground Lock at 2 pm on Saturday.

We continued down stream with Andrew and Wendy meeting Paul and Christine on “Waterway Routes” on the way and exchanged pleasantries as we passed. (Paul, now you know why rushing back downhill”.

Some of the locks had quite a bit of water flowing over the top gates so you wouldn’t want to put your bows there when going uphill.

We took LT into Ferry Meadows and also behind the rowing lake to show them the moorings, after that we continued on to The Dog in a Doublet where we moored for the night.

At this point we found that Magic could no longer stand up and I had to carry him off the boat and laid hi on the grass. While Andrew went to check the pub out I phoned one of the local vets Pengally and Mizen http://www.pengellyandmizen.co.uk/home.html  
who were more than helpful, the vet rang me back to asses the situation and agreed to come out Saturday morning to put the old boy to sleep. They were happy for us to stay where we were and they would come to us, I enquired about payment and they would be happy with a cheque of ring the office with a credit card.

Andrew returned and reported the pub a goer, nothing wonderful he said but OK, so a that is where we spent the evening.
        
OK turned out to be an understatement, we had 4 very nice meals from a very imaginative chef helped down by a couple of pints of beer and a couple of bottles of red wine. This pub is well away from anywhere so was not overly busy for a Friday night but the restaurant deserves to do better than it was last night. http://www.doginad.co.uk/ There are visitor moorings just above the lock but the road in quite busy with speeding cars, however it does quieten down at night.

When we returned to the boat Magic was up to meet us, much different from 4 hours before. I helped him out of the boat and he managed a short walk to leave a deposit on the grass and have a wee. We were expecting a mess on the floor if not this evening then overnight, but now he has been out we may be OK.