Let's run away from it all!

Here we are Reader, aboard What-a-Lark again.  It's been a while, 
a very good while since we were here....Four months if you can believe it!  I couldn't and got David to count up again, yes four months.

So in the mean time David has been away with his boyfriends to play golf in Florida.   I don't know if he missed me or anything but he says he won't go to Florida again....  Too hot, too bloody humid and too many ghastly wealthy Americans but apart from that he had a good time.
(Oh he thinks the restaurants were dire too).

The babies continue to thrive and as soon as someone can figure out how to get them to sleep in the day time please let their mothers know.  
David answered an SOS last week, I was in London with the other daughter, he came and walked his grandson around the village for two hours giving this daughter a well earned sleep.  This daughter has a bad knee so can't do long distances.  
Now this is something pretty new to David as he never did this for his own children, too busy down the pub, I kid you of course, too busy working on the farm 700 hours a week.

So we are away from it all, enjoying being alone on the waterways just us.... except its surprisingly busy!  Turns out that the one lock here at Great Haywood is closing Monday for three weeks maintenance and loadsa boats are making a dash for the other side of it. 

We unpacked, joke, I unpacked the one bag each we have brought up.  More food than clothes.... Well, I do hate to be hungry.  

I just rolled up the duvet from our bed at home and brought that, so the usual fight to get the cover on in a small space was avoided.  

Surprisingly there were two big bluebottle flies in the boat, I would have thought tit was far too chilly for them now, I caught one and under the influence of Autumn Watch (my favourite TV programme after Spring Watch) I fed it to the fish.

We spent the first evening in the marina as it was about 3pm when we arrived.  I had had the heads up about flooding in this area.  So instead of boating we wandered down to Shrugborough to have a look at the water features, and most attractive they are too.

So here you can see how far the river has risen and spread.  Normally the river is quite a bit narrower, people can walk and climb the rocks alongside. 

The last gasps of autumn colours.

Nice chap, but the river is about four or fives its usual width here.

So for those of you that are familiar with the front grounds of NT Shrugborough   HERE  you can look  HERE  for some Google images before the rains came.

Personally I think it adds a sense of romanticism but I expect the NT to disagree.

So the river flowed over and washed away the fencing.

Look closely for a narrowboat on the canal out of sight.

Shrugborough Hall, wet version.

He was nicely in focus against the colours behind then he moved his head....

Sun disappearing now.

Out of shot a couple of swans liked it as I do.

At the height of the floods the water rose to cover the two ends of the bridge.

Walking back towards Great Haywood, a beautiful vista.

Quite a flow on this normally gentle river.

Now can someone clever tell me what tree this is?  Very lovely in the late afternoon sunshine....

Supper was soup with olive rolls and cheeses.

Lovely to get into bed tonight except for two more really annoying big flies buzzed about.