Well, it's been quite busy since I was last here! We went home on Thursday evening and sorted a few things out, we returned to the boat on Friday evening, then walked up to Odiham High Street for a meal with all the kids at the 'Next Door' restaurant, it was good to see them all together, and was kind of 'in lieu' of my birthday as I'll be in Morocco for that. A good menu, good food, and boy was it all going off in Odiham!! There was some sort of parade, hundreds of people in costume and very busy pubs and restaurants, when we left the street was still busy with people drinking and such. We and some of our offspring returned to the boat where cake was provided, that explained why nobody was too keen on having desert!!
Trying to remember what happened on Saturday? I went to see Galleon Marine to confirm arrangements for them to look after the boat while I was away, chatted to many people, society members, John Pinkerton crew and other boaters, then got ready as I was skippering a birthday charter on the JP in the afternoon.
Charter went really well, we had 48 on the way out and 50 on the return, 2 were held up in traffic. I was amazed as to how much was going on at Odiham Castle, there were tents and people all over the place, a couple of the crew went off for a quick look about, we allowed the passengers about 45 minutes. We met the 2 steamboats on the way up and Dawn on the return trip, really good to see everything so busy.
After a bit of dinner on the boat there was a bit of a sing song for the boaters, even free beer!! Not really my thing, but it was ok.
Today, well, took a walk about Colt Hill which was being set up for the rally, bought me some Basingstoke Canal plaques, then we blagged a ride on JP down to the Castle to see what was going on. There was lots of living history stuff, really interesting, an archaeological dig, birds of prey and lots of people checking it all out, really good to see. We had a beer and some hog roast for lunch while watching a sword battle.
We walked back to Colt Hill along the tow path and checked out what was going on there. Penny took up her advertising role and was trying to attract new customers, I had more beer and wandered about, ended up showing someone (sorry I can't remember his name) who was very involve with the restoration our barn, which was apparently a cheese store in the day! A very interesting chap.
Back at Colt Hill we moved the boat to a vacant bit of Tow Path and packed up to come home, I'm off to Morocco for 3 weeks tomorrow afternoon.
The return trip will start on Tuesday 16th June. That's all for now.
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