Thursday 16th - Tuesday 21st August 2007
After driving back to Dibden Purlieu the previous day, I set off early to drive up to the new Blisworth Marina near Gayton Junction. Robert phoned just after I had turned off the A43 onto the tiny road through Tiffield, so I stopped the car and rang him back. He had just collected his AS-Level results and had A grades in Maths, Further Maths, Physics and Chemistry. We were particularly amused by his marks in one of the Chemistry modules where he had scored 91 out of 90, which works out at just over 101%. I have a pet hatred of idiotic management and marketing phrases such as "thinking outside the box", "pushing the envelope" and "giving it 110%" and Robert has heard me ranting about the impossibility of the latter. Perhaps I would have been more concerned if it had been his Maths score.
After leaving the car at the marina, I walked along the towpath to Blisworth village just over a mile away and ten minutes later was on a bus bound for Northampton. There were no direct trains to Stafford, so I travelled south to Milton Keynes and then on a Virgin Pendalino train. Back in the 1970's I was a student Signal & Telecomms engineer with British Rail and was disappointed when the government scrapped the tilting Advanced Passenger Train project. It had overrun its budget and was behind schedule, and then was forced into service too early due to political pressure during an extremely harsh winter. The tabloid press loved the fact that it broke down in Scotland due to frozen brakes, although they forgot to point out that all other trains had the same problem. So here we are a few decades on with another example of a British idea that we handed over to others to exploit - in this case the Italians, although I have to admit that the name Pendalino has much more élan than our old name of APT.
At Stafford Station, I caught a taxi back to Salt. The driver was Indian and we had an interesting discussion about the celebrations marking 60 years since Independence, and then went on to solve the rest of the world's problems...
At Salt, I met up with Jen who had just finished lunch at the Hollybush Inn. She was surprised at my early return and had to sit and wait while I ate my ploughman's lunch. She had found it a bit strange on the boat with just the dogs for company, who were thoroughly confused and unsettled by the comings and goings of various members of the family.
At about 2:30pm we set off for the cruise down to Great Haywood and then moored at Tixall Wide for the last time this summer. We then did the 4˝ mile circular walk through Shugborough but via the Clifford Arms for beef salads - excellent and amazing value. This has to be one of our favourite pubs, along with the Hollybush Inn.