Back Afloat.

Great Haywood, Trent & Mersey.

Night time approaching overlooking the Hutt Valley

After a month ashore in New Zealand, which turned out to be a very busy and fruitful period in our lives, it was time to return to Blighty and Gypsy Rover. We landed at Heathrow on Tuesday afternoon planning to spend a couple of night’s at our daughter’s place in Wimbledon.

That’s our baby waiting for fuel in Hong Kong

Even though we were both tired and jet lagged after our 26 hour flight via Hong Kong in which we got very little sleep, we still had things to do. Wednesday morning we caught the train out to Cranham, Essex to visit Cranham Caravans and Motorhomes initially just to discuss what was involved in buying a Motorhome to replace Gypsy Rover when we sell her some time this year.

Resting while in transit at Hong Kong

After lengthy discussions with Ian, the Manager and Paul, his Sales Manager we placed an order for an Autotrail Arapoho. Due to the way Autotrail now operate since the recession, orders must be placed at least 5 month’s in advance especially if you want a model with an automatic gearbox. It’s not the way we would choose to do business but as the saying goes “when in Rome do as the Romans do”. Having taken the plunge so to speak it was back to Wimbledon to reflect upon the days activities.

Thursday arrived all too soon and it was another day on the trains ,this time back to Stafford and Great Haywood Marina. As we had plenty of luggage we caught a taxi from the station back to the marina where we guided the driver to where we had left the boat. Shock horror, no Gypsy Rover, so it was back to the office to find out where she was presently moored. We eventually found her tucked away among the shared ownership boats. Apparently when the workshop lads had finished the blacking last week they were unable to return her to the original mooring due to very strong winds so just left her where we found her. The only problem with this was that we had arranged for somebody to run the engine a couple of times a week to keep the fridge working. At this other mooring they were unable to fulfil this task and after a week the battery was below 11 volts and the fridge shut down. Still we didn’t lose too much, a bit of cheese and spread.

This morning we filled the water tank and then went down to the facilities block for a pump out before we headed back out onto the “Cut”. Being a Bank holiday week-end, moorings are as scarce as hen’s teeth but we managed to find one halfway between the junction and the lock in which we only just squeezed in between 2 other boats. After a quick trip into Stafford to visit the Bank and restock the larder, we will probably stop here for the week-end and start heading South on Tuesday.

Two hitch hikers but we're not going anywhere just yet