17 – 18 July 2020

Tolkien-inspired

It was another Friday so another non-working day. I do like them. I have got so used to them in such short a time, I don’t know how I could live without them now 😉

Once again it was sunny and hot. It had been sunny and hot yesterday and so, there was nothing else for it, I had ordered a book. I ordered Tolkien – The Maker of Middle Earth by Catherine McIlwaine from the Bodleian shop. It was a book produced in support of the exhibition of the same name, the Bodleian Libraries’ summer 2018 exhibition, at

The Weston Library, Oxford
1 June 28 October 2018.

Mu and I both went to the exhibition when moored in Oxford with our previous narrowboat – MIRRLESS. It was inspirational. I never bought the book at the exhibition but decided to rectify this now. The one thing you have to know is that it is a big book, especially as I ordered the hardback. I also ordered a print of the the jacket cover of The Hobbit. The print is going to take pride of place, on the wall, just to the left of my desk. I’m not sure about the book…

Adrian had returned and tidied up the woodwork that had been disturbed in the fix of the overflow pipe (see We Found a Leak). It was as if nothing had ever been disturbed.

Following on with the Tolkien-esque theme (I am also currently re-reading The Lord of the Rings) we also started watching The Hobbit – An Unexpected Journey such a great film.

Pirate-inspired

Saturday saw us travel to Kings Lynn. Kings Lynn is the nearest piece of coast to where we now live. We weren’t planning to visit a beach, just hopefully ‘go to the sea’. It had been a very long while since we had. It didn’t quite turn out to be the ‘Oh, I do love to be beside the seaside’ experience we had expected. This will become apparent.

We had set off a little later than we had liked but it was the weekend and a little lay-in was in order (or more like, “Oh, what? Is that the time? I thought we were setting off early?”). It was a long way, well it seemed a long way when actually plying the highways. Also, there were also a lot of roundabouts. I am no stranger to roundabouts having worked in Swindon for many years – they have the ‘magic roundabout’. It seemed that no sooner had you crossed a roundabout, another reared up on the horizon.

Pleasantly Surprised

We were pleasantly surprised with the town, it was very nice. The estuary of the River Great Ouse had places to explore, with Ferry Lane and Purfleet Road giving a distinctly ‘pirate’ feel to the area. Sculptures of anchors and chains and a figure in a tricorn hat was inspiring. This was especially as I’m writing The Tales of Silverdale – A Pirate Ship In Dark Waters , on Ko-fi as we speak.

We sat out in Tuesday Market Square at a socially distanced Prezzo for coffee, which was handled really well. We bought a vegan pasty each and a vegan chocolate muffin from a local, independent bakers (one door in, one door out) for our return to Silverdale.

As we had arrived later than we had liked, we never got to walk down to the sea. So, there was no harbour to wander around and no sea to look out to but we were pleasantly surprised with Kings Lynn and will return to explore further, another day.

rp – peace and narrowboats