Meeting John, Sharon & Smugger at Great Haywood - Trent & Mersey Canal

Saturday 2^nd June

General Store at Little Haywood

We are staying put today and it was another sunny warm day.  We went for a walk along the towpath to the village of Little Haywood where there are a couple of pubs and a General Store. We went in the Store and it's part of someone's house, very quirky and well stocked with general provisions.

Here They Come!!

We bought an ice-cream and a drink and walk back to the canal and sat on a wall to eat our ice-creams and have our drink.  We then walked back to the boat.

BBQ Cooking

Cough Cough!!

Early afternoon John, Sharon and Smugs turned up, it was lovely to see them, we helped them moor up then we had a coffee together.  Kev and I went up to the Farm shop as we needed some tomatoes.

Cheers!

Grubs Up

Early evening Kev lit the BBQ and we cooked pork steaks, chicken kebabs, burgers and sausages and John made flat bread and for dessert we had bananas stuffed with chocolate and hot fruit salad all cooked on the BBQ. We all sat in the front of our boat and enjoyed the food washed down with a jug of punch that Kev made and very nice it was too.

I'm waiting for a Sausage

John & Sharon

The BBQ still had some heat in it so we put the kettle on to boil .  Kev and John took Smuggler for a walk while Sharon and I did the dishes when the kettle had boiled sat in the front of the boat.

It was then gin tasting time and we spent the rest of the beautiful sunny warm evening trying several gins, we had Whitley Neill Quince, Sibling Autumn, 6 O'Clock, Gin Lane 1751 and Co-op London gin and they were all very nice.

Smugs in the Dinette

During the evening Smugs had enough sitting outside so he asked to come in and made his self very comfortable on the dinette!

Mist Over Shugborough

Once the sun had set and it was getting dark, the mist starting rising over the fields in the Shugborough Estate which looked quite eerie.

It was then time to go in, so we said good night and would see them again in the morning.  It was a lovely evening spent together eating, drinking and catching up, really good to see them again and spend time together.

Sunday 3rd June

Musicians at Work

When we got up the sun was shining again, we walked up to the Farm shop to get a few things as we are moving on tomorrow.  When we got back to the boat, John and Sharon aka Brahms and Liszt (well they were last night!!) were sat outside playing music.  They are in a band and have a concert in June so was doing some practice.  John plays the cello and Sharon plays the violin.

They are heading into Great Haywood marina today as they are leaving it there for a few weeks while they go back home so late morning they untied and headed up to the marina.  We are going to meet up with them one more time this afternoon at the Farm shop for an ice-cream, then tomorrow morning we will head off down the canal and they will head off on the bus to Stafford to get the train back home.