Still in Sawley Marina
Mike had sorted a travel plan to get him back to Trinity Marina in Hinkley, courtesy of Google Maps and Directions. He left the boat at 10 am and walked out of the marina - no short step - and then to the main road where there is a nearby bus stop. He arrived with about 5 minutes to spare. The Skylink route goes through Long Eaton, with a stop about 100m from the rail station. Unfortunately there were emergency road works and 3 way traffic lights not on Mike's schedule! He alighted form the bus with over five minutes knocked off the transfer time allowance.
Unusually, `Mike had not bought his but there was a tickets in advance but there was a friendly ticket office who efficiently produce his ticket. Alas, Mike was not as efficient as his phone, with Wallet on it, did not connect with the card machine (he later dis covered why) So he has to resort to the old fashioned method of plastic card! Of course, he could not remember the PIN so had to go through the rigmarole of unearthing it from its secret cache. Then the booking clerk told him that the train was two minutes late - still, he made his way quickly (or what passes for quickly today) up the steep ramp to the platform. The train was now six minutes late.
After chatting to a cheerful fellow waiting passenger he suddenly thought to check something unrelated in his wallet. At that, point to his horror, he spotted that his credit card was missing. It must be still at the ticket office. He quickly assessed that it would be better to miss the train and catch the next one compared with the fuss over replacing the card. A quick dash down the slope was rewarded with relief at seeing the card still in the machine - it was out of sight of the clerk who has not been alerted to it. Guess what, back up that slope again.
The train did not lose any more time on its run to Leicester but Mike made a speedy transfer across the bridge to Platform 1, where the train was already waiting as it starts from here. About 20 minutes later he was sorting out which was was to town from Hinkley station.
It was a little more uphill than he had realised but he followed the signs to the bus station where a 158 was ready and waiting (again it starts from here) As soon as he had sorted his ticket (well, recorded his bus pass) the driver set off. It was about twelve minutes to the marina.
After a quick visit to the marina office to return the fob that we had kept in case we needed access out of hours, across to the car, set u the satnav and fire off a text to Christine to report progress, and then he was on his way back to the boat.
The journey from marina entrance to marina entrance was about 45 minutes. But Mike was not yet finished. He continued into Long Eaton to an InstaVolt EV charger he had already located into he satnav. The car still had 75% charge but to tomorrow's journey back home his estimated to be around 150 miles so we wanted to be as full as possible. It was speedy as promised and Mike was eventually back on the boat before 2 pm.
Meanwhile, Christine had been doing the usual round of cleaning and packing - almost complete by the time Mike was back. Just the clean duvet cove to put on - we usually manage this as a two person job.
In the afternoon, Mike also tackled a job he has been wanting to do for some while - sorting out the jumble of cable behind our tv. Early in the days of Alchemy we initially used a satellite dish and satview together with a library of films on a small disc. A little later we added a ROKU device so that we could stream from one of our mobile phones. In the last couple of years this method has largely displaced the alternatives and so quite a few cables and plugs in the cupboard under the screen.
As well as being a little simpler to turn on, it is less likely to have a failure. Still not perfect as on the canals we cannot always find a signal on either phone (they are on different networks, alas soon to become one) That's what our good stock of library books is for - our local library is very accommodating with our longer spells away and the number we can take out at one time. Good staff at Devizes!
Finally, we managed to transport most of the stuff to go in the car this evening. rather than leaving it to the morning. At this marina the car is only a very short distance from our mooring.
0 Miles - 0 Locks
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