Packhorses

Have you got a licence for that Sir? Joe sits and enjoys the evening sunshine in his hopeless quest for a fish....

Above, the view from Caxton's side hatch - our own lake no less!

Yesterday we tramped on over the Leek Tunnel and headed for town. Our mission, to find food and a Bank. It was a fair old walk into Leek along the towpath, through a Countrypark, an industrial estate and suburbs and finally into the town proper. First job, find a LTSB to get my bank card 'un-blocked'. Our attempts to pay our credit card bill had resulted in a 'fraud alert' and our cards being blocked and trying to get this resolved by means of a dodgy broadband signal or a mobile phone were proving impossible; so we needed to find the bank and get them to resolve it. I ended up in the bowels of the bank on a phone trying to communicate with an automated system that cut me off after 14mins....twice! In the end I got a member of staff to try contacting the security team on their internal number, only 22mins before we spoke to a real person and got it resolved in minutes. Joe's card is however still blocked but at least I got a STD number rather than o845 numbers that everyone seems to use these days.

Card cleared I could concentrate on the food quest. First stop Aldi for fruit and veg. Half the price of anyone else and worth using when I can find one. A visit to Morrisons as Jill and I headed back to our respective boats completed the task.

All that was needed now was packhorses to carry it all back, and like taxi's there is never one about when you need one. "Anyone seen a Ass around here?"