Somewhere for a cup of tea

You can judge the different quantities of traffic on the Irish canals compared to those in England by the size of the marinas - or at least the marinas on the Shropshire Union Canal in Cheshire. I was there with my parents last weekend, in search, as always, of a place for a little run out and a morning coffee. It has to be easily accessible as my mother has a dicky knee, and this place was just the business:

It even has a resident boating type with beard - a very nice fellow, whose companion had dodged out of the picture. In this building is a café, a reception area, noticeboard with boats for sale and so on, a small shop selling maps, guidebooks, the boating equivalent of bachelors' rations as found in country pubs in Clare.

The café was very good, even though it had a feel of the garden centre café about it. There is a phenomenon here that has spread around England, people visiting not to buy plants, or because they are on a boat, but for the restaurant experience. There's a huge garden centre near where my parents live that began as a tiny local nursery. It's just been taken over by Wyevale, and is in the process of getting not only bigger but less and less to do with gardens. The retail side has opened out to include Lakeland, Edinburgh Woollen Mill, shops selling clothes, shoes, cute things to put on your mantelpiece and so on. The plant bit just makes the coachfuls of visitors feel they're doing something outsidey.

I digress, as do the marinas. This one does have boats, lots of them, but many people, including us, come for the cup of tea and the view:

This one also has a water taxi - there it is in the photo with the blue frilled canopy. It takes anyone who wants to go the short distance to Audlem where it lets you out just below the lock to visit the pubs (very good, with excellent ale), or buy supplies other than bachelors' rations.

There is also a small caravan site - full, with two caravans and a camper. We know all about this diversification in Ireland, though not on the canals but beside the Shannon, and not in caravan sites but in the harbour carparks. We're all just travellers looking for somewhere to go.

One of these days Joe and I will take a narrowboat from somewhere like this and explore the English canals. Oh, I haven't said where this is. It's called OverWater Marina, and it's off Coole Lane near Nantwich. Coole Lane was a favourite when we went out hacking on our ponies as children, and it's been a favourite with Joe and I on bikes visiting the home place. Just off Coole Lane is the Secret Bunker, set up during the Cold War, but that's another story.

Slates and gates

Admittedly the weather's been shite a good bit of the time, but it's still taking much longer than expected to get this shed completed. I like our builder - he's friendly and helpful and full of promises. Anyway, once the blocks arrived they went up quickly enough. Not necessarily in a straight line, but they were up. The lintels weren't altogether on the same plane either, but who needs a door and window to look level? Being picky I think.

It was at this stage of the build, with both gables up and vulverable, that the Big Wind came. In the photo above you might be able to see a long piece of timber placed vertically against the gable with another pressed against it at an angle. This kept the gable safe until the roof went on.

And finally the slates - I was really pleased with the slates. This is what we'll have on the house too. They come from a quarry over near Portroe in Tipperary on the other side of the mountain we can see from the site.

When I say the slates come from the quarry near Portroe, they actually come from Spain. The Portroe quarry is who we pay and who delivers them. This is how things work, slate-wise.

All that's left now is the ridge tiles. Maybe tomorrow, the builder says. There have been good reasons all along why it couldn't be done today.

Bearing this in mind, Joe asked a friend to help him put in the doors and windows, so that job is done already.

It's beginning to look like a building.

And we have gates! This was another job the builder was going to do, but guess who put in the posts and hung the gates in the end?

What a clever dog!

Blocks and dogs

There are forever rainbows over our new site. Actually, there are forever rainbows because there's forever rain.

This is the concrete arriving for the slab for the big shed. I was surprised to see the way the builders transported the concrete - via the bucket on the digger, a surprisingly delicate operation.

And here's Aoife with her new friends. They all turn up to say hello.

Driveway, digger and the slab which forms the foundation for the big shed. And beyond, the winter view, the no-leaves-on-the-trees view across the lake to Tipperary.

Finally the neat and smooth concrete slab, ready and waiting for the next stage. So quickly there is concrete where there was boggy ground.

Work begins - blocks and blocklayer on site.

Windfalls

Wednesday afternoon, Joe in work in Limerick and the storm hit. Next time we'll take proper notice of orange/red weather warnings from Met Éireann. I had a call from Joe in the midst of it all when the eucalyptus trees were trying to touch their tips to the ground. 'I'm stuck the other side of Killaloe. Trees down. I'm on Séamie's phone.' Ah yes. Joe's phone was safe in its usual place on the counter in the kitchen.
'Don't go out,' he said. 'It's wild out here.' Normally this wouldn't have mattered but I was due to teach flute in the Community College in Scarriff. 'Cancel your classes,' said Joe. Looking at the trees still in supplication outside, I could see he was probably right. I went to my phone on the kitchen windowsill as a text came in. Electricity out in Scarriff. No lights in the classroom. Cancel the classes.

A while later Joe phoned again. 'Still here. They're working on the trees. No other way to get home - other lads have tried it. Trees down everywhere. Have to go, I'm on someone else's phone.'

I filled containers with water. The lights were flickering, I was expecting a power cut and that would mean the pump on our deep well would stop working.

When the wind abated slightly I thought I'd better go out with the loppers and clear any fallen branches/bits of debris for when he did manage to get back. All well til I turned the corner at Ryan's Bridge and then

Two big fir trees. Loppers not much use here. I headed up the other way - we have two ways in - and cut back a fallen gorse bush. He should be OK now.

It took him 2 3/4 hours to get home instead of the usual one. Students at the university were warned not to leave. Madness. Our broadband was down but we still had electricity. Amazing.

Next morning out with the chainsaw.

And ta dahh!

We got off lightly. The electricity people have done a lot of work on the infrastructure round us. We complained when they turned off the electricity for the day a few times over the last couple of years, but we're grateful now.

I'm doing this while we have a broadband onage - we're promised on and off outages for the next 48 hours.

Our storms have started having names. This one was Darwin. Welcome to a new world.

Pine marten at the kitchen door

So I looked out of the kitchen window yesterday and here was this lad/ess mooching about, nose in air, sniffing the pastry on the bird table, coming up and scratching on the kitchen door.

It's a pine marten, a protected species (though not by farmers if rumour is to be believed). They can be vicious creatures (who can blame them in a difficult world) but are very beautiful. This one took itself off to the back door next.

I was poised with the camera on the inside of the door, waiting for its nose to poke through the dog flap. If it had scratched that door, I'd say it would have been through in a trice. I put the lock on the flap. Didn't fancy a confrontation between pine marten and elderly dog.

A while later it was back at the bird table. I opened the half door and it came towards me, pointy little nose pointing. We had a chat before it lolloped off. So much for the shy retiring pine marten nature. Not a bother on it.

Post Script. We found s/he curled up in the greenhouse. When I came back with the camera the fluffy tail was all we could see:

 

Muck and Slig

So work begins. What was a field is now a mess. But a promising mess.

Here's where the new gateway is going to go. The wire has been taken down.

The digger has arrived and is about to turn the first sod. A very big sod.

The tractor and trailer were blocking the road - good thing there isn't much traffic, and extra helpful that the work is being done by the neighbours from up the road. Builder neighbours, not just any old neighbours.

Here's Joe directing operations.

The pile of earth is getting bigger.

In fact it's much much bigger than anyone expected. This is good from the point of the view of the gardener (me) as it turns out we have some splendid topsoil. From an initial position of thinking there may be none, this is terrific. The neighbour whose sons are doing the work tells us this part of the field was for many years a garden with crops of potatoes and cabbage, so had years-worth of manure piled into it. That topsoil is going to be put to work again.

The downside of this beautiful pile of growing medium is the hole it has left.

In order to create a driveway you have to remove all the soft stuff, replacing it with slig. Big hole = many loads of slig.

Here it comes:

Oops! The telephone wire! Joe's just noticed. Thankfully so has the lorry driver.

Load after load is delivered and spread.

Until finally:

We have a driveway. This is the first working layer. Eventually it will look prettier but this will take the heavy vehicles necessary to any building endeavour. How much cleaner it all looks when the sun is shining.

And this is Rambo and Aoife.

Aoife loves going up to the site. She has three friends, all the same size as her. Rambo is part sheepdog part terrier. The sheepdog is the top bit, the terrier is the legs. He looks a little odd when he stands up. He's one year old and terribly enthusiastic. They play together until Aoife's had enough when she tells him to feck off. Good for a puppy to have a crotchety old lady to put him in his place. Rambo belongs to the family who are doing the building work, so is around a lot. I'm enjoying him. He comes for walks with us too.

There will be more when I've downloaded the latest pics.

Lough Derg, high water

The levels are rising. We were in Mountshannon yesterday, and the water was very near the top of the wall in the old Council section of the harbour.

 The newer Waterways Ireland part has a higher wall so is a little less scary:

Aoife the dog was on the other side of this part of the harbour. We thought she was going to run across it towards us it looked so land like. The small white sailing boat has damage to the mast. It's a very exposed harbour in wind. The boat on the left that's listing is often at that angle - it's not because the lines are too tight.

Hard to believe this was full of swimmers and sun bathers only a few months ago. The short piers that had children running up and down them have disappeared altogether.

More rain forecast.