We needed rain, didn’t we …

Friday 28^th August; to Aston marina

In all our years of boating we don’t remember ever needing to unload the car in full wet weather gear – well we had to today.  Yesterday there was heavy rain forecast all day for most of our drive to Aston, so we put the journey off till today, when we would be able to do most of it in the dry and only the last bit in heavy rain.  But we had forgotten Friday is the start of the bank holiday weekend so of course the traffic on the M5 from Exeter got heavier and heavier as more and more cars and motorhomes joined the crawl from the Devon and Somerset holiday resorts.  Thankfully most of them went off towards South Wales at Bristol.  Then there was a long delay on the way to Worcester with some traffic incident, and then the usual crawl to join the M6.  I had plenty of time to get a snap of the M5 aqueduct on the Tame Valley canal before we could join the M6.

No boats today 

We crossed the aqueduct several years ago and though we waved at the cars nobody waved back –  they probably hadn’t noticed a boat in the sky!  But with the Perry Barr, Rushall, Ryders Green and Walsall flights around it all closed it would have been surprising to see one today.  In the end we spent 6 hours in the car, 2 hours more than usual for this journey and then had to unload in the pouring rain, as it clearly wasn’t going to stop.  But we’re pretty slick at it now and we were inside in the dry quite quickly.

The boat was festooned with cobwebs and thistledown, which must have come in via the open hoppers.

We had hoped to have time to settle up in the office and cruise for an hour or two this afternoon, but we were exhausted – particularly Dave who had driven the whole way – and it was still pouring with rain so we opted to stay in the marina tonight.  The rain wasn’t too bad by about 6 so Dave and Jess had a good walk, and by bedtime the sky had cleared.  A partial lunar eclipse was predicted for tonight, so there should be a ‘blood moon’ to see.  I woke about 4, during the period the eclipse was supposed to be around its maximum, but although the moon didn’t look quite normal, it definitely wasn’t any shade of red.

Soon to be obscured

Tomorrow’s rain clouds were already on their way.