More pottering around, Spitfires and being social

Hum. The folks at Clements Engineering have annoyed us and the Marine and General guys too.

The promised delivery date for a nice new Aquamet 22 shaft went past as quickly as a Lightning fighter being flown by the good Captain Rae. Only nothing arrived. They didn't even respond to emails for a while. Annoying but sadly typical for the marine industry. We had used them before for prop work on our Broom boats and they had been great. Anyway, that means the planned 6 weeks for the work will be longer as a relaunch without a shaft is tricky. Grrr.

The silver lining to this was more time to catch up with friends, do a few house bits for the toddlers and generally remember what life on dry land is like.

A few days in Stourport allowed some canal and riverside walks:

Arriving in Bewdley we were treated to some decorated "dolls' houses" as part of  a local festival:

Tremendous amounts of effort and attention to detail had been lavished on them. Having seen this, we decided that the locals needed more of a life.

A visit to the NEC with Norman and Julie was equally entertaining. As Bobilers (keep awake, you should have read about a Bobil ages ago on here) they were looking at new motorhomes (or Bobils). We enjoyed sitting in a £250K Niesmann and Bischoff offering. Owning a Nordhavn makes you appreciate quality in such things you know even if the same Nordhavn keeps your bank balance more suited to the other end of the motorhome market.

We had some fun visiting Mary, Ian and their rather gorgeous hound called Paddy:

He has eyelashes of a size that most girls would have to stick on.

Mary had a small challenge with her navigation, planning to take us to Aldeburgh we ended up in Alburgh which is about an hour's drive away. So much for not checking the suggestions on Google maps when typing the address in..... However, it offered a nice diversion to Southwold, the home of Adnams beer and Copper House gin. Such a pity.

Walking around Epping forest we found a pub for lunch that was very canine focused:

Paddy did well.

Martin and Inge (owners of another 47 called Malaspina which is like ours but way way nicer) were in the Hamble river and foolishly said we could pop over. Martin had been given the dream birthday present for blokes. It involved a World War II pilot experience. Briefings, a flight in a Tiger Moth then the same in a Harvard trainer:

and then in a two seat Spitfire:

Any resemblance to Biggles is purely coincidental or a product of you having read too many W E Johns books in your youth. The grin says it all though.

As a commercial pilot and ex RCAF chap, Martin did a fair bit of flying the planes himself. Inge had a consolation prize - a flight in the Harvard too and used this to capture some wonderful images of the Spitfire experience:

Of course Inge is a pilot too (although she seems to like those dangerous things with rotors). Captain Rae - bet your 787 Dreamliner and your old Lightning fighters don't look so impressive now.... Cue jealousy.

Lunch in the New Forest with Anne and Izzy was a story of slow service, good food and an enormous and probably superfluous pudding. A wander in the forest allowed us to bump into some "free range" pigs:

who were totally unconcerned by our presence:

Izzy was much more excited though and her lead was subject to a breaking strain test.

Keeping to the social theme, Andrew and Linda took us for a walk around the Jurassic coast on one of those crisp clear days:

and we were reunited with Dyl the dog. As you can see, he still  likes the odd nap:

Sensible animal.

Finally, we fear that we have created a monster. Sometimes we should know better. When the toddlers needed a new phone, we went and got a "semi-smart" one. They are committed iPad users but introducing them to the Android world was OK. Loading Whatsapp on the phone was, maybe, a mistake. Time will tell. However, a coffee stop now means email and Whatsapp checks, a most serious business: