Monday 17th September

Another night of being rocked about.  I took the plants off the roof yesterday as one had blown over and I’m glad I did.  We decided to leave early (well for us anyway) but took a short trip round the basin first.  It is such a shame that the weather has been against us as I know there are some lovely walks around the area but maybe another time though probably in the car.

We seemed to shoot up the locks – they were all empty except for the top one and I’m afraid we left them all full as no-one seems to be able to give us a finite answer as how to leave them.

 

We went back to Galgate to empty the toilet cassettes as we couldn’t find the emptying place in Glasson!  In fact for marks out of 10 for Glasson I would have to give 3 which sounds awful but I’m sure that if the weather had been better that score would have been a lot better.  Not only could we not find anywhere to empty the toilet but the local shop keeps the weirdest hours over the weekend and then when it is open it doesn’t have much in there!  The best part about Glasson?  Definitely the Port of Lancaster Smoke House J

 

As we were coming up the Glasson Branch we saw a strange pill-box.  For some reason it has grass growing on the top and it is also minus a wall which we assume the farmer has taken down so he can get his sheep in there!  Strangely enough it was the only pill-box that we saw.

 

After stopping for lunch we motored on to Garstang.  It was a very pleasant afternoon though chilly.  I took the opportunity to get the ironing done – a chore that I don’t really mind doing now that I have my ironing board.  I put my iPod on, quite loud, and iron away. 

 

What is the matter with me?  My recent writing has been reminding me of poems from my childhood but today it’s a 19^th Century folk song!

 

'Twas on a Thursday morning

When I beheld my darling,

She looked so neat and charming

In ev'ry high degree.

She looked so neat and nimble, O,

A-ironing of her linen, O,

Dashing away with the smoothing iron,

Dashing away with the smoothing iron,

She stole my heart away.

 

As we approached Garstang we turned into Bridge House Marina as they advertise diesel.  The marina is very small and is 99% motor cruisers so a 60 foot narrow boat wasn’t very easy to manoeuvere in their basin.  Needless to say they didn’t have any diesel and we have now discovered that none of the marinas on the Lancaster Canal has diesel – they say it’s all to do with the Customs and Excise people who recently changed the duty on red diesel.  They suggested that we go to a fuel depot in Garstang and buy a container load but we weren’t to mention that it was for a boat!  Richard duly did this and paid 80p a litre which is at least 10p a litre less than a marina would charge!

 

We then took our latest acquisition out for an airing to Booths.  We had seen some people in Leigh who had one so I placed my order and we picked it up when we were at home.  It was a great success and we were both arguing as to who was going to pull it J