Big Trip - Day 12

Today was the Braidbar Boats open day, and there were fifteen boats here for potential customers to look round.  Most of the attention was on the newest boats, but a few people wanted to see round Briar Rose, to see what fits into 59ft, or to see how the boat has fared over nine years.  Dozens of customers turned up, and it was a very busy day.

In the evening, once the potential customers had left, there was the owners' charity auction, then a barbecue, then Bruce's quiz.  Teams had to have representatives from at least three boats.  Adrian and I were in different teams - and the team I was part of won!

Big Trip - Day 11

After eating on board last night, we walked down the road to The Miner's Arms for a drink and dessert.  It's a nice pub, and our desserts were good;  the other food we saw looked nice too.

The rain arrived as forecast overnight, and we were glad we had only a mile to do today.  We set off at about 10am, when the rain wasn't so heavy.  It was a murky day, but the scenery is still pretty good.

We're in former mining areas now, so the bridges have changed from the arched stone design further south, to flat.  It's so the bridges could be jacked up if they were affected by subsidence.

We arrived at the deeps just before Braidbar's yard, and moored alongside another boat.  Later in the day there was a mass rearrangement of boats, and we're now moored a bit further along outside Farne.

This afternoon, we've sat chatting to Les from Eleventh Heaven and Eileen from New Dawn outside the Trading Post.  We were waiting for a Tesco delivery, which arrived a bit late.  It turned out it was the driver's first dayon the road;  he was very helpful and wheeled his trolly right along the towpath to the boat.

This evening, the Braidbar owners' weekend gets underway with a communal meal, where everyone brings something.  There's an international theme, so Adrian has cooked a boboti, a South African dish of curried beef with a topping.

1 mile, 0 locks.  (140 miles, 73 locks)