Stratford sojourn

Yesterday the weather was good and we spent the morning doing a bit more cleaning down of the boat – scrubbing front and rear decks, James fitted a new glow plug in the Mikuni central heating unit as it’s taking a bit too long to fire up.  He repaired the ‘war wounds’ on the blacking, after having been through 56 locks since we left Birmingham, while Doug trundled back and forth to the laundrette.

Here’s ‘Chance’ in one of the quieter moments when there weren’t too many tourists around.  Some of our foreign visitors had never seen a narrow boat before so there were a lot of questions to answer.

We haven’t done the tourist trail as such, as we’ve been to Stratford many times, but we were passing by this building so we felt obliged to take a photo of Shakespeare’s birthplace.

Further along we found this, not so famous but, even more impressive and very crooked building.

Some nice brickwork on this old bank building with very attractive terracotta tiling depicting Shakespearian characters.

At the end of the canal basin, by the river lock, is this signpost. Narrow boaters are used to these statistics but for car drivers it’s quite thought provoking!

In the afternoon we had a visit from our friends Chris and Les from nb ‘Eleventh Heaven’ which we had been looking forward to very much.  They arrived by car on this occasion(!) and we spent a lovely afternoon with them catching up with things.  In the evening we went out for a meal together to “Cafe Pasta” (the same place as the two of us had been last evening) and the meal was just as good this time.

Les, Chris and Doug enjoying the afternoon on board ‘Chance’ with pre dinner drinks etc. The evening was a great hoot – we took the camera for some photos but is was so good we forgot to take any!

Today started a bit dull weather wise, although it has brightened up.  James took advantage of being close to Stratford hospital and walked up for a Warfarin blood test early this morning.

This photo today shows how we’ve virtually cleared the basin of boats – must have been something we said!