Polishing, stupendous lunch and a foul up.

Saturday morning and “David the insomniac" was up dressed and out washing the last unwashed and unpolished side boat.  

This left Amanda and I awake, drinking tea and snugged up in bed together talking about the vital things that Ladies have to talk about frequently.

These were actually taken earlier this week when David did the really knee achingly tricky pointy end.

Much later David reappeared having finished his jobs came in for coffee and a rest.  This was sort of a sign for me to go and do my bit.  Polish application.  

I was ready in hours.  I rubbed it on all over and Amanda buffed.  Result? 

Gleaming boat ready for our annual membership to the Shiny Boat Club.  We even did the chrome portholes too.

Moving off about midday we heading towards  Leicester city centre for lunch.

Passed these charming tearooms in this lovely old lock side cottage, I am loving the ancient slate roof.

Just along the way was this amazing piece of history.  Its a Packhorse bridge, it dates from the 1400’s and probably replaced an earlier bridge over this marshy land.  There are eight arches in total and three “Refuges” that is a little space where people could let the horses past.

Beautiful stonework 

Amanda standing in one of the "Refuges", David was in the distance disappearing off on the canal in WaL.

Very narrow, just for horses.

All these centuries and still stands strong.

There were about five locks to take us to the city centre, the river Soar flows in and out of the canal, you know when you are on a section of the river as the water is much clearer, but still not there was not much of a flow.

I think this was called St Mary's Mill.  Lovely old buildings mixed with small amount of modern art.

Last lock before the centre.  On the river again here, pretty clean water.

We moored up on the straight in Leicester.  Ours was the only boat but we moored anyway.  I changed out of my oil smeared fleece and trainers, rouge was dabbed and away we sauntered to our favourite restaurant Kayal   HERE  we found this place 18 months ago and have been every time we come to Leicester.  The food is terrific and was again today.  I had prawns with an onion, garlic, ginger, tomato and mango sauce with lemon rice. Utterly divine.

David was asked if he wanted to join us on a trip to John Lewis (Lovely big department store) but declared he would rather have his wisdom teeth pulled.  So he returned to WaL to read the Sunday paper, in peace.

We had a great time and hardly brought anything……much.

Casting off again late afternoon we trundled on through swathes of floating detritus and rubbish, so disgusting in places I shall forward the photos to the council and MP’s on Monday.

At least someone sort of picks some of it up....

The inevitable happened and the prop became fouled, in every sense of the word.  David did his version of a boy band member stripping off and getting down and dirty on our behalf, us two were a bit helpless as we were on the tow path but the boat could not be pulled into the side due to the shallowness, it took him over half an hour to clear the rubbish, clothing, plastic bags and branches.

The water smelt dreadful.

That pile of plastic was much much bigger when David was finished.

The last lock of the day was also full of rubbish and David decided to pull the boat out by hand to avoid the prop becoming fouled again.

Man handled.

A chilly evening, the heating went on and we moored in the first place we could find in Watermead Park

just before it began to rain.  Its a lovely country park of over a hundred acres not far from the city centre.  

Don’t tell anyone but all in bed by 9:30pm, its all Rock and Roll here for sure.