Wednesday 4 December 2013 Shackerstone

The workmen finished dead on 5pm last night leaving us with a quiet night. Mind you they started dead on 8am this morning with all their reversing bleepers and on bit of kit gave two bleeps followed by the instruction to “Stand Clear” it must send the people in the houses opposite batchy let alone the workmen. With so much plant going backwards so often I do wonder how effective the alarms are when they sound continually. By the time we left at 1030 they had started to drive some of the piling in  by the entrance, I wouldn’t want to be there when they are doing that all day.

Today was another clear sunny day but the breeze now has a definite nip to it, even though the actual temperature was 9° it felt a lot cooler. We continued to the end of the canal where we winded and filled with water. There are moorings all along this stretch with only a solitary cruiser moored opposite the winding hole fishing. I did notice that while we were filling with water he did draw forwards a few yards. We moored a few boat lengths ahead of him to eat dinner.

There is a short tunnel near the end of the canal, but its the bendiest one I know, about three quarters of the way through our tunnel light failed, I was pleased it wasn’t a long one.

On our way pack to Shackerstone we passed a shooting party about to take the last drive of the day, by the number of dogs they had I would say they were a very lucky group.

There are a lot of long term moorings at Shackerstone on nb.Tixal was on one of them, looking at her chimney I would say she is a steam boat.

We moored for the night just before bridge 52 on the 48 hour moorings in Shackerstone and this evening we will walk to The Rising Sun for dinner and maybe a pint.