A strange and somewhat difficult day today

Sunday’s are a day that I always try and go out. I make up a coffee in my mega mug and head out generally to the river, either at Gunthorpe, Stoke Bardolph or the Victoria Embankment. I find if I don’t make the effort and go out I just sit in my flat all week and that’s really not good for me.

Today I went off to Stoke Bardolph and I have to say it brought back some quiet powerful memories of some of the good times I had with my father and brother. My father had a little open topped boat with a 2-stroke outboard engine called “Chuch”. At the weekends we would go down to Stoke Bardolph and put Chuch in the river using the slipway and then head off on an adventure/expedition a few miles down river to visit my cousins Carol and Keith who had their boat at Gunthorpe. That slipway is still there but now it’s blocked off so nobody can use it for their family adventures anymore.

It’s only a few miles to Gunthorpe but it always felt so risky because the engine was was a bit flaky and we only had a tiny fuel tank and if anything went wrong there was no such thing as a mobile phone back then to call for help. We were on our own, doomed to float forever down the River Trent and out into the North Sea!

Once at Gunthorpe we had a cup of tea on my cousins boat which was so much more fancy that our little motor boat, and I remember loading up the jukebox at the marina and playing “Amazing Grace” over and over again for some reason only known to kids in the 70s.

Then we would climb back into Chuch and set off back up river to Stoke Bardolph never quite knowing if we would make it alive. Finally, with the boat out of the water and hitched up to fathers car we headed off home for tea, a bath and bed.

I so wish we could all do that just one more time before our time together finally runs out.