Nick's Un-birthday!

Thursday 18th August, 2016 in Aqueduct Marina.
Another lovely morning, if not quite so clear.

A hilarious start to the day...
Our diary said that today was the birthday of our friend Nick, who is the Moorings Manager at Aston Marina. So, we called him on the phone to wish him a happy birthday - but getting his voicemail, we just sang happy birthday loudly in two-part dis-harmony.
Shortly after, we got a call back from Nick asking if it had been us who had sung Happy Birthday on his voicemail. It turned out that his birthday is actually in March! However, he said that it was one of the funniest things that had happened to him in ages and that he and his family fell about laughing!
An unexpected side effect of our daftness was that Nick happened to be in our area today and very kindly offered to drive us back to Aston Marina. We have to go home for the weekend and had arranged to moor MM at Aqueduct Marina about a mile from Church Minshull and then take a train to pick up the Touran, which is parked at Aston Marina.
So, with a degree of reluctance and sadness, we said goodbye to our mooring at Church Minshull and headed for Aqueduct Marina.

On the way, we passed this cheerful gentleman in his inflatable canoe.

Aqueduct Marina turned out to be beautiful. Very well maintained and landscaped with mature trees, lovely reed beds, flower beds and planters.

The mooring allocated to us was occupied, so R had to turn MM round, head back to the service bay and go to the office. They were miffed that someone had overstayed, but told us to go to bay D1, which turned out to be the nicest spot in the marina!

Nick had said that he would arrive late afternoon, so we passed the time happily sitting in the sun outside the marina's "Galley Café" and having tea/coffee, cakes and chips!
The Café overlooks the marina and one of the boats for sale was a Kingsground boat (the blue one, second from the right in the photo).

Nick arrived about 4:30. It was good to see him again so unexpectedly and to have time in his company on the drive back to Aston.

Our faithful Touran was waiting at Aston Marina. Strange to look out over our empty mooring bay, although we noticed that the Eddie Stobart tin of sweets (kindly given us by Nick and family) was trying to muscle in on MM's spot.

We drove home, arriving sometime after 10:00pm - but, thanks to Nick's very kind gesture to drive us to Aston, we arrived a full day earlier than expected.
We shall return to MM on Monday by train to Crewe to continue our Summer Cruise.
Today: 1 mile, 0 locks and 3.0 hours (including power yesterday).
Trip: 248 miles, 192 locks and 190.5 hours.