World tour of Cheshire

I spent the day on the boat. The list of priority jobs were largely outside tasks. Today was the third attempt to get up there in a fortnight, but heavy rain in Deganwy kept me at home. Today I took a chance. I’ve had a large roll of thick memory foam in the back of my car for weeks, and cutting that to shape and size of the quarterberth was Job Number One.

Once again the weather decided to be uncooperative. Periodically it absolutely pissed down. But I managed to complete a few internal jobs:

• Fixed the charger for the handheld VHF
• Cleaned the head and flushed through with fresh water
• Cut the memory foam as above
• Checked the instrument/nav lights (nav lights OK, instrument backlights not so good)
• Drained the bilges

What didn’t get done:

• Sand and oil the coachroof grab rails
• Sand and oil the companionway woodwork
• Change the starboard compass
• Measure the volume of and sterilise the port and starboard fresh water tanks
• Check the water heater and shower and galley taps

I need a day of good weather to get them done and I’m reliant on that falling on a weekend now.

Anyway.

At 15.54, bout 50 minutes after I set off, the good lady satnav said there was congestion on the usual route so she was taking me a quicker way home. Well, I don’t actually know if it was quicker (not being able to be in two places at the same time/not being able to make the trip via two routes at the same time), but blimey and indeed O’Reilly the good lady satnav and I covered a lot of miles. We also visited (well OK, passed through) some places. Some of these some places were a little bit… Odd.

• Chester
• The Crocky Trail
• Guy Lane (no, really)
• Clotton (not Clutton, that’s in Somerset)
• Tiverton (which I remember as being in Devon)
• Tarporley (I thought that was in Manc)
• Beeston (which I thought was in Nottingham)
• Snugbury’s (the site of a bloody enormous insect of some species or other – see below)
• Nantwich, and
• A whole pile of other places I’m not able to recall right now.

Accompanying this journey through madness was a bunch of eclectic music but the most pertinent was a track called ‘The Body is still there but the mind is gone’, by the stunning musical collective The Rock of Travolta.

The whole trip felt massively surreal. The total journey time was 3-1/4 hours I don’t know if sticking with the motorways would have been quicker, it would definitely have been less road miles, but would it have been so geographically interesting?

I doubt it.

Here’s that monster insect I drove past at Snugbury’s. It’s massive!