Friday 31^st May 2019

We had a morning of admin with a short walk. Our crossing of the River Severn estuary has now been arranged. So looking forward to that, a real adventure.

Tracey arrived after a 3-hour journey and, after a bit of lunch we set off for Eva’s horse residential course presentation in Shropshire. We had been anticipating this for months. Eva had been on a five-day residential course looking after horses with riding and dressage instruction. Today was the culmination and we had been planning to be there since the course was booked.

She was so emotional when we got there. Always a sign of a good time I suppose. She didn’t want to leave the horse, didn’t want to leave her new friends and didn’t want to go home.

We paid a good amount towards a course for next year which appeased her somewhat.

Eva with her group and group leader

The boat, that we know of, has been hit twice today despite being in the middle of a line of boats. When we returned from our walk this morning, we witnessed a boat that has a home mooring opposite us cross straight over the canal and into our side. The guy was apologetic but would most probably have said a word if he hadn’t been seen. This boat is a launch design and has four thrusters in place of a traditional propeller, and yet he still managed to hit us.

Just as we were leaving for Eva’s event, a Starline hire boat came zig-zagging down the canal and slammed violently into our side. There were five people on the back of this and none of them seemed to have a clue. We even had to fend them off otherwise they would have bounced all the way down the side. They then hit the bank just passed the last moored boat, veered across the canal and rammed the bridge, then turned, hitting the roof against the bridge hole and then hit it again with their back end. The boat was only out from the basin and their instruction would have finished at the lock, a distance of just 50 yards.

Normally we don’t get excited about hire boats. We all have to start somewhere and, at the end of the day, we hired for many years and became quite experienced. But some hirer’s tuition obviously leaves a lot to be desired sometimes and, thanks to Timothy Bloody West, people seem to think it is acceptable to ram a boat and just move on.

We rang the hire company to complain. They informed us that they give an hour’s instruction. They must be the only place in the country that give an hour’s tuition. They are going, they reckon, to contact the hirer. In the meantime, tomorrow when we have the opportunity, we will have to inspect for any damage.

We had a few pints in the Black Star in the evening followed by a Chinese take-away. In the pub we fell in with a large crowd of people all out to meet with a couple that were over from Spain. A woman in the group was telling us that the pub was originally a boater’s pub with a boater’s chapel and school adjoining.