Forest of Dean and gasless

 One area of the UK that we know nothing at all about and have seen even less of is the Forest of Dean. When the Speech House hotel had a winter offer on for a good value D, B and B deal, we had to try it out. The hotel is a lovely old building:

With a tremendous history. A 17th century hunting lodge that was the Verderers court for the area too. See Speech house history. The visit and food were great but a bit of a catalogue of errors on the part of the hotel. Luckily, all to our advantage! We had booked one of the cheapest rooms, in the courtyard. It would have been fine but the captain discovered a very wet carpet in one area of the floor when his sock felt rather clammy. That was close to the shower area so we guessed that there was a leak. Back to reception and the nice lady apologised and gave us "Room 2, I think you will like it". Yes, it was a master four poster room and huge. Even the canopy above the bed felt 3 metres away:

So, happy folks. Their break included a cream tea on arrival. We asked the nice reception lady who told us we just had to go to the restaurant. Cream tea ordered and some excellent scones were delivered, but with a pot of black coffee and no milk instead of the tea that was asked for. That got fixed and the waiter was most apologetic (a theme is building here) and delivered a large pot of tea and even more home made biscuits. The waitress then delivered a bill for us to sign - we told her that is was part of our package and she said that reception should have given us a voucher. Of course, we should have known that via ESP... The waitress said she was sorry and sorted it out with the receptionist. The amount of double handling needed in the place by the very helpful and friendly staff was amazing!

Dinner was amusing too - we ordered a portion of seasonal vegetables to share but two arrived. One was more than enough but... The food was great so we retired happy. 

Day 1 was spent wandering around the area and loving the forest, scenery and little villages. We visited Lydney harbour which is clearly a place where sad old boats come to die rather than be used:

To manage the access to the massively tidal River Severn , there are three set of lock gates only the outer ones cannot be moved any more as they as silted in place:

Some impressive shapes in the mud but not great for boat access. It was a chilly day and so we passed on sitting outside the lovely new little café that had been built on the harbourside. It had good reviews, looked lovely but had no inside seating at all. Instead the crew found a place in a nearby industrial area that also had rave reviews. Oh yes. They must have all been written by the owner. To be fair it was a proper greasy spoon place for the local workers but the coffee choice was "black or milky". It didn't taste of anything that resembled coffee but it was wet, warm and incredibly cheap as were the sticky tables and pervading smell of elderly cooking oil.  A never to be repeated experience.

On day 2 we went wild and took the little Brompton bikes around the so called "family trail".  Here is the Forestry Commission's marketing "flyer" for it:

You can see that it is on "specially surfaced paths". Oh yes, most of it had been surfaced to the same standard as Britain's decaying road network. Potholes, rough non levelled surface, embedded rocks not rolled in at all etc etc with only two sections that were really suitable for a road bike. We were not alone in discovering this. However, we did the loop (poor shaken up and filthy Bromptons) and had an amazingly good coffee and cake at the cycle centre when we finished.

Our final breakfast continued the "disorganised" theme - they were using a tiny annex to one of the dining rooms for breakfast and it was full so we stood around in the large empty restaurant area wating for a table. This huge empty area was in use on the first morning when fewer people were staying?? We were told that we would go to another restaurant at the other end of the building but that for the buffet cold food we would have to walk it through the hotel. We declined. Oh, the order for one poached egg was delivered as two - they are feeders! Naturally the bill was wrong on check out too which involved dragging the hapless waitress back to reception to remove an incorrect charge. As we expected  it was not an issue to get it fixed, just vaguely amusing.

All of this was done in such a friendly way that you could not be anything but happy with the stay and hotel. We just felt sad that a lovely location with good food had such poor processes. If ever we wanted to work again, helping them sort out their operation would be an interesting job. 

Before heading back, we were lucky enough to meet up with Michael and Frances, the owners of Coracle, a Nordhavn 40 who you will have seen featured in this blog before. They live in the area and built, from scratch, an excellent visitor attraction steam railway - look at Perrygrove website. They took us on a lovely forest walk from Symonds Yat in glorious sunshine so that we could enjoy views like this over the river Wye:

Then a drive along the riverside before lunch and then the drive back to the boat. We were so pleased to have some local guides who explained some of the history and knew the trails. We loved the area so we fully intend to return. Sorry Michael and Frances.

Maintenance news:

Guess what - when we got back on board, we found that there was no gas coming to the hob through the nice new pipework and regulator. It seemed that the solenoid valve which controls the flow had failed (this happened a few years ago and we had to fit a new solenoid to replace the original). Our evening snack plans were quickly changed. The next morning the captain did some basic checks and found that where the solenoid wires had been cable tied back to the new pipework, one had been under a lot of strain and the connector had started to come loose. The two black wires in the picture we shared earlier:

Some wire strippers / cutters, a new connector and 10 minutes later we had gas again. way cheaper than a new valve. If only all jobs were that simple.

Wroxhall Abbey, covid and filter fun

Anne (Izzy the dog's owner) had celebrated a nice round birthday a while ago but our joint celebration was set for January as she had so many other "events" booked. Just before we were due to head to Wroxhall Abbey for a little pampering, her youngest son tested positive for Covid. Yes, not totally a surprise as the kids seem to all be little super-spreaders. 

Not tempted to her company under those circumstances and as it was too late to cancel the booking, we amended it to take the Toddlers instead. Their first escape from Hythe Marina since covid kicked off so quite an event.

The hotel is a lovely old building, recently refurbished, with the old Abbey in the grounds as you can see: 

Have a look at their website for more information on the history of the place, very interesting  - Hotel website link

Part of the birthday treat for Anne included a bottle of prosecco in each room so for the first couple of nights we enjoyed "Prinks" before dinner;

and this seemed to make Mrs Toddler smile a lot although she kept a tight hold on her face mask just in case:

Mr Toddler was way more relaxed:

The real issue was day three when we had run out of fizzy stuff. Mr Toddler pointedly told us that as we were going out, we could buy another bottle. For some inexplicable reason, we complied.

There is plenty to see and do near the hotel:

Stratford-Upon-Avon and Royal Leamington Spa were the chosen destinations as we didn't know either of them well. Both were well worth visiting.

Close to the hotel is the famous (well, to canal boaters anyway) Hatton flight of locks. 21 of them in a very short distance that looked like hard work to us:

Quite a busy day getting through all of those, we much prefer the single lock out from Cardiff bay into the sea which is hydraulically operated by lockkeepers  too. The tea rooms at the top lock are a real throwback to the days of friendly family run places and the advertised "famous scones" really are very good. Just don't use the customer toilet in cold weather.......

We loved the buildings and buzz in Leamington Spa too. Somehow this broken glass repair seemed very apt:

and the views from the riverside walk were good if gloomy, thanks to the weather:

All in all a good little break!

Maintenance news:

It starts to feel like "preparing for the new season" time. So, the captain had his annual diesel fuel fun and swapped out the fuel filters. Only 8 this year as the heating system filter was new during the summer. The worst bit was taking them up to the filter disposal drum in the marina to find that it had gone (apparently it was run by the now failed marine engineering shop, Team Marine). So, they came back and resided in the engine room until alternative arrangements were possible. That was fine until one of the strong ziplock bags holding them decided that it had a poorly made seam which allowed a little diesel to weep out. A little diesel makes a lot of smell that likes to linger too. So glad they were in the engine room.

Why 8 filters? Well, one polishing filter to clean fuel pumped from the storage tanks into the supply tank. A pair of Racor primary filters for the main engine (redundancy) and one on engine filter. Then a primary and secondary for the genset and the same for the wing engine. This year was way easier than before having swapped out the original primary cannister type filter on the wing engine (it was horrid) for a Racor turbine unit. That saved a good 15 minutes and lots of bad words.