That Didn't Go Well

Just to prove that even the pro's don't get things right 100% of the time here are a few pictures of the Marie who is currently stranded on the Trent.

Efforts to tow her off last night failed and she currently has tugs in attendance this morning on the tide to try and remove her again.

The photos are from a Facebook Group and a friend who was passing yesterday evening and a further link to the news story is below:

http://www.scunthorpetelegraph.co.uk/news/local-news/ship-stranded-near-north-lincolnshire-287075

A Good Day

We had a great if not expensive day out in Lincoln yesterday starting with watching Dunkirk at the cinema in Brayford Pool.  It was really very good.

We then had a few beers in town before heading to Huckleberrys for dinner which was again really very good and highly recommended.

We followed up with a few more beers in town before retiring to the boat on our favourite mooring in the city centre.

Slowly Does It

We are having a slow and relaxing start to the day with copious amounts of coffee and a spot of breakfast before heading into Lincoln to watch a film at the cinema.

A nice relaxing Saturday.

Movie Time

The weekend has come around once more and tonight we are planning a quiet night in with a movie, a few homemade cocktails and a nice chicken curry that I made earlier in the week that just wants warming through later on.

Tomorrow we are planning a day in Lincoln, starting with a trip to the cinema to watch a film, followed by a few afternoon beers and finally a meal in a restaurant we have yet to try Huckleberries in the city centre. We have been told it is really very nice so as we are on our own this weekend with everyone else already meeting up down the Witham we though it has to be worth a try. Hopefully the food lives up to the rave reviews.

Busy Planning

Having just got back from one big boating trip it seems very odd launching straight into the planning of yet another one. Next summers group trip to the Thames, the highlight of which will undoubtedly be cruising our own boats through the city of London.

It will be slightly different to the planning carried out in previous years as this time we will have (to date anyway) a reasonably large and very varied group of boats to contend with and get in the same place at the same time. Herding cats springs to mind!

The first hurdle to tackle is where all of the boats will be launched. Being small and with a low air draft we want to tackle the whole of the navigable Thames from Lechlade right out into the estuary. However this means that we won't be launched in the same place as the bigger boats as they won't get under some of the bridges near Oxford. With this in mind we are adding a few days onto our break so that we can explore the upper reaches of the river before meeting up with the rest of the group further downstream.

The Glut

While we were away our fruit trees have been busy producing their biggest crop of fruit to date.

Last week we had a glut of soft fruits with the cherries and plum tree, these made a lovely fruit salad when added to some scavanged blackberries and some nice farm grown raspberries.

This week it has been the turn of the apple trees. They have cropped very early this year and very heavily. The eating apples are easy enough to contend with but the cooking apples have produced a bumper crop.

So there was nothing for it and last night we set about making an apple and cinnamon pie. Me on filling duties stewing apples and Liam on pastry duty. I am rubbish at making pastry so that is definitely a blue job.

But one pie didn't make a dent in the apple mountain so it was back to stewing more apples, this time adding some more early blackberries picked on our way home and the last of the plums from the garden. This was portioned up and frozen to make more pies in the coming weeks.

Looks like we have lots of pies to make!

Back In the Swing

It seemed like a long week last week, the first back at work after a couple of weeks off always does. But finally we are back in the swing of things, back into the daily routine and back into our healthier eating habits.

We tried our best to eat healthily while we were away but temptation is never too far away. So we did somewhat surprise ourselves when we stepped on the scales last week to discover that Liam was the same weight as when we went away and I had put on just one pound. We can only assume that this is due to the extra exercise and lots of walking we were doing, as the diet went out of the window. In fact at times it felt very much like we were on the Atkins diet!

With the holiday now a dim and distant memory we have started to eat better. Back to cereals in the morning, a salad box for lunch at work and a healthy cooked meal in the evening after work. Last night it was a lovely homemade seafood curry made with smoked haddock, cod, salmon and king prawns and served with wholegrain basmati rice and a spicy vegetable bahji. Delicious.