Wednesday, April 30 - Ellesmere to York

We brought the boat back into Ellesmere on Monday night and moored just at the Ellesmere arm of the canal in a nice spot. On Tuesday morning, we had a lovely day of shopping in Ellesmere, browsing every store that was there.

We set out originally to see if there, by chance, would be a yarn store there. Lauren was smart enough to ask a lady at the Ellesmere information desk, and sure enough - much, much to my surprise because I had looked for one on the Internet - there was a needlework shop just across the street that carried "wool" - the British word for yarn, no matter if it's 100% acrylic. My lucky, lucky day. Had the Information lady not told us, we would probably never would have found it because the window of the store had clothing in it - and not even knitted clothing. The owner of the store had surprises inside - yarn and needles and other knitting supplies.

I bought four lovely 100 gram skeins of "wool" - two of which actually had some wool content. I'm making hats and headwarmers - just small things, and it really helps to keep my hands busy. It makes me feel very content. So far, I've made two hats and one head warmer, and I have a second headwarmer about half done.

We're in York now, and we have Internet. I'm catching up with posting pictures to Flickr. I'm glad I got them all organized so well while we were on the boat because it will take much less time had I not done so - and it's taking long enough as it is. I take too many pictures, I know, but I always think there's something in the picture I'm about ready to throw away that someone else might see and be interested in. However, I do have a lot of duplicate-like pictures that I'm posting now, and I'll probably go through a delete some of them when I finish posting. I took several hundred pictures last week.

York was only about 2-1/2 hours from Ellesmere, and we arrived here shortly after noon. It was a good morning for driving, and our GPS has been really reliable in getting us to the right exit and the right turn off the round-about. We're at the Gateway to York hotel in Kexby - a little place near York, and it's really nice, quaint, and cozy. We saw signs that said "Park and Ride," and we inquired about it at the hotel desk. Sure enough, our curiosity was rewarded. You drive to a car park, park you car, and a bus comes along every 10 minutes to drive you to the town center of York - no mess with traffic or finding a parking place. So we did just that about 3:00 this afternoon - just about the time it started to rain. We did a little foot tour of York, just to get a feel for the layout of the city, and we came back to our room soaked!!! But we're glad we did it. It will make our touring much better tomorrow when, we hope, the weather is more friendly to browsers in the city.

No pictures with this blog - be sure to check out flickr and see where I got with my postings. We've seen some beautiful, beautiful countryside!!! We are ready to go again. It was with sorrow that we left our boat this morning. We had a most lovely week.

Sunday, April 27 08 - Narrowboating on the Llangollen Canal

Bridges - a familiar sight these days
Originally uploaded by Suzie Rozie.

We've been on our narrowboat for four nights now, cruising the Llangollen portion of the British canal system from Ellesmere to Llangollen. It's similar to RV'ing in the way that you're moving your house from place to place, except that you're on water instead of on land. The first real difference I noted, as we took off from Ellesmere last Wednesday, was the speed. The maximum speed limit on the canals is 4 miles per hour, but it's rare that you're going even that fast because, at that speed, you create a wake for boats moored at the side of the canal and those you're passing, going in the other direction.

To provide a gauge of how fast (or slow) we've gone, according to our map, it looks like we've traveled about 20 miles of canal from Ellesmere to Llangollen. We left Wednesday afternoon, about 2:00, and cruised until about 5:00 and stopped at Maestermyn, about 6 miles away. On Thursday morning, we left Maestermyn between 8 and 9 and stopped at Sun Trevor at about 5:30, making about 12 miles that day. After lunch, we stopped at Chirk for about 1-1/2 hours, so I estimate we made less than two miles per hour that day. On Friday morning, we cruised into the basin and moored in Llangollen, a piece of cake.

You can't use four miles per hour as a measure of how far you can go in a day. Not only do you stop here and there just to look around, but there's the matter of draw bridges and those really time-consuming locks! We navigated the two locks at New Marton coming out, and we will navigate the same two coming back, but other than that, we are free of locks on this section of the canal system. We were really, really fortunate that a group of experienced boaters - two men and a woman (I'm guessing that one man was a brother and the other the husband of the woman) - who helped us through the locks. They were wonderful. The woman took me under her wing, and showed me just what to do, letting me have a hands-on experience.

There are any number of good things about this boat trip, but one of the most impressive is how friendly and helpful people are. When we docked at Llongollen, we met up with our "new friends" who helped us through the locks at New Marton, and they gave us some hints about how the town was laid out. We chatted with them for quite a while. They've been canal boating for about 20 years, and they were natural ambassadors for their country and for canal boating. Really, really impressive!

We met another couple early in our trip, moored (docked) by the towpath (the walking path beside the canal) who have lived on the canals for a number of years, and we learned a little about canal living. They actually have wood-burning heaters aboard their boats, and he was chopping wood which he then stored in neat piles on top of his boat.

We've passed a number of boats where the occupants sell goods and services - hand-crafted items, food and drink, etc. Some of the permanent residents of the canals have potted plants - glorious flowers - on top of their boats.

In some places, the canal is wide enough for only one boat, so you must be on the lookout for boats coming in the other direction. At one place, the sign instructed one of us get out and walk ahead for about 900 yards and alert the captain, or tillerman, if another boat was headed in the opposite direction. In these narrow places, there may be - or may not be - a little place where you can pull over and let the other boat pass. If there isn't a place, then the tillerman must back the boat up (not necessarily an easy task) until we come to a wide place to pull over. We were fortunate that we didn't have to back through any of the narrow places coming up!

The downstream boat has the right of way, and the trip to Llangollen is up stream. We hear that cruising back down to Ellesmere is faster and easier.

There are frequent places where signs are posted along the towpath telling you that mooring is permissible for up to 48 hours. At those places, you will see mooring rings installed along the towpath, but there are no electric or water services, and there is no cost to moor there. At Llangollen, where we are moored now, we have both electric and water in this basin, and mooring here is permissible for 48 hours at a cost of 6 pounds a night. The basin is really nice, and the walking distance to town is very short.

Before I forget, a towpath is so named because in the older canal days, the narrowboats were towed by horses. Someone would lead the horse, to which a long rope was tied and connected to the boat, and walk along the path and tow the boat up and down the canal. Here in Llangollen, you can pay to take a ride on a horse-towed boat to the end of this section of the canal.

Britain has a large canal system. We're cruising only a short portion on the Llangollen canal. While the system was originally created for commerce, it's used (almost) exclusively for recreation these days. British Waterways takes maintaining the canals seriously, providing a great active holiday for many people.

Some memorable points from this leg of our trip to the UK:
- The countryside is breathtakingly beautiful from Ellesmere (England) to Llangollen (Wales).
- Welsh cakes, a type of flat scone, should be declared a controlled substance because they are so habit forming.
- The people, without exception, are wonderful, friendly, and helpful.
- If you have a need for speed on a holiday, the canals are not the place to go! Prepare to gear down the moment you step foot on the boat.

Here we are ... Hello U.K.!

Our plane was a little late - about an hour or so - coming into Manchester International, and Eurocar had already closed shop in the terminal where we thought we were going to pick up our car. Thank goodness, though, they were still open and available for us in terminal 1, and after searching through his system a few times, the clerk at the desk was able to locate the car they had reserved for us - an Astra - in time for us to try to find our hotel before dark.

So, what's an Astra? We're not sure, but the sticker on the window says that it's a GM car. It's pretty nice and it feels roomy enough for our purposes. We're surely glad, though, that we didn't bring any more luggage than we did. We put the back seats down flat so there's one solid open space from the trunk to the back of the front seats, and our stuff fits there more or less comfortably. Had we brought any more, we might have had some problems.

Our Astra is actually an upgrade from the economy size car we ordered - without an upgrade in price - so we've wondered if we would have been able to get our luggage in that car had we received the size we originally ordered.

Our little Garmin Nuvi is a great addition to our travel kit. We purchased the UK map pack last winter when we planned this trip, and Lauren was able to program in all the postal codes. What we've found out, though, is that we needed just a bit more information to get us from door to door. We printed our google and Mapquest maps and programmed the Nuvi to get us from city to city; but once we're in the city, our brains (and our Nuvi) go blank! I spent some time last night and this morning and refined our printed google and Mapquest maps (in pencil) by finding the exact location of our hotels and then entering them into the map search engines. As we enter each city, then, if we haven't gotten it just right on the Nuvi, we can enter another bit of information and get us much, much closer to our lodgings.

Lauren was smart enough to make note of all the postal codes before we left home, and that's a huge help. Both Mapquest and google recognize those codes as locations, and the codes seem to get us, initially, within blocks of our lodgings.

Lauren's doing well driving on the left side of the road while sitting on the right side (passenger) side of the car. We do talk out loud about it while he's driving, hoping that helps him learn to adjust to this new way of doing things. It took us two tries and one bad right-hand turn where Lauren initially headed toward oncoming traffic but caught himself just in time (I think I might have yelled or something) - all on the same loop - to find our hotel in Manchester, but we did it!



The next morning, I was up early, and I came across this little National Trust park at Quarry Bank Mill adjoining the hotel property. I think the hotel and the park shared the same parking areas. A number of people were out walking their dogs or taking their morning run, so it's definitely a park that's used by the locals. We enjoyed a bit of the path, but then it became muddy and didn't look too good for our purposes since we were dressed for traveling to our next hotel and didn't have good hiking shoes on.

The weather is clearing somewhat today, but Saturday and Sunday were days of light rains and over cast skies. Our hotel here in Southport is down in the main part of town, so we spent yesterday walking and window shopping, along with lots and lots of other people. The weather is just incidental to the locals - if it's at all negotiable, they are out in droves. Good for them! We're going to make that our motto while we're here and do the same!

My fingers got fidgety last night, so I looked up yarn shops on the Internet (we have free broadband in our room here). I found one that looked like it was a few blocks from here (The Prince of Wales Hotel). I figured it would be out of business because so many shops like these disappear before they actually get off the ground, but, hooray! We found it today, and I picked up a couple circulars and skeins of yarn! I'll be knitting before sundown! I had debated bringing my knitting with me and had opted out. Mistake! But the mistake is now cured, and I'm a happy camper.

We called the people at the Ellesmere marina to do our required "confirm your reservation" today. The number they had printed on our confirmation was their fax number, so I had to do some looking on the internet to find a number that actualy had a human attached to the other end. Tomorrow we'll head for Chester, nearer to Ellesmere than here in Southport, and then on to Ellesmere the next day. We're getting comfortable with the time change and the driving, and we're getting excited about our boat trip!

What church means to me ...

Flower Cross at Mt Olive
Originally uploaded by Suzie Rozie.

I always look forward to seeing the Easter cross at Mt. Olive. It takes a lot of effort by someone and produces such a beautiful symbol of Easter. The flowers are fresh, and they're carefully placed around the form to create this beauty. This year, the youth group put it together.

We don't always have an active youth group at Mt. Olive. Our church is small. Over the years, it expands and contracts almost equally, leaving the membership at a static number. The composition changes from time to time, though, and we don't always have the right number and mix of those who are in their teens and, perhaps, early 20s, to keep a group going. We've had a nice active group for the last few years. I don't know if they've created the flower cross before, but whether or not they have, I appreciate their efforts.

But my thoughts in creating this post included more than just my appreciation and enjoyment of the flower cross each Easter. My thoughts include the reasons I go to church, aside from the overriding intent to worship with people who believe more or less the way I do. Church has always been an important part of my life - social, spiritual, educational - bleeding over into anything and everything I have done.

As an example of one of the things church means to me at this time in my life, take this picture. It just looks like an ordinary, uninteresting picture of the back of people's heads during an ordinary, uninteresting Sunday church service. But it's really more than that.

This picture was taken Easter Sunday, so our crowd was a little larger than usual, and we sat in a different place than usual. Most of the time, we sit on the other side of the church, about 2/3 away from the front. I don't see the backs of everyone heads then, but I see a good number of them. I don't always know the names of the people I see, but the people are familiar to me.

There are a couple young families, and I delight in seeing them interact during the service and remember sitting with our young family, many years ago. My memories are comforting and I pray for those young families that they will be blessed as much as we have, that they will always hold onto their faith.

There are teenagers and young adults, and I know some of them are there because it's what their families do, and others are there, alone, by choice. I am blessed by those who are there by choice, because I know the guiding light of that choice will serve them well all their lives. Their being there is a witness to me. For those who are there just because it's what their families do, I pray that they, when offered the choice later in their lives, will continue to seek their identity in their Christian beliefs and in the church.

There are aging couples, and I pray with love for them, for their health, for their remaining years together, knowing that there may be tough times ahead. That's true for us, too. Some of them are having tough times even now.

There are the widows, and sometimes widowers, and I am inspired by their example, by their courage, by the exhibition of their continuing faith, and I learn from them. I thank God for them, for their example, and I pray for strength for them.

There are cranky people, happy people, beautiful people and those who are not so beautiful, and I wonder at the lot of us, that we're here together and there's really no difference between us. We all are seeking that strength, solace, encouragement, forgiveness, character, and guidance that we receive from being their together, worshipping, bonded by our common beliefs. Being with these people encourages me.

We have a choir of ordinarily no more than a half a dozen aging voices, none of them trained, with a mixed variety of talents. That they sing for us often is always a blessing to me, even when they don't quite sing on tune. That they are there, believe the words they're singing, derive joy from their joint effort to present the Word in music to us, brings me joy. I thank God for them.

Our pastor is not Billy Graham or Adrian Rogers (famous among Baptists for his Jackie Gleason-like "How Sweet it is!" when he spoke the Gospel from the pulpit) or Billy Sunday or ... I could name many if I would do a little lookup on the Internet. No, our pastor won't be on the national circuit soon, but he's there for us every Sunday. He always has a lesson he wants to impart to us, and usually it has to do with forgiveness, keeping our eyes on Jesus, or another well laid-out point. I thank God for his faithfulness and the seriousness with which he takes his shepherding of our little flock. I'm sure there are more glamorous or interesting things he could be doing, but he's with us each Sunday.

So the picture of the backs of the heads of the congregation on Easter this year is meaningful to me. Seeing the backs of these heads is one of the things church means to me. These are my people, no matter what we have or don't have in common. We are bonded by a forgiving love that's greater than the sum of all of us. We all believe we can be better than we are - even though we stumble around and sometimes see nothing but failures - and that being better means we give up our time - and our lives - to someone greater than ourselves. We all have the hope that our faith brings, and it's contageous.

Church is way more than even these small things to me. Church, as inconvenient as it sometimes seems when I think I'm too busy, too interested in something else, too tired, too disgruntled, too whatever, is necessary to my life. It's an outward sign of my beliefs. It's how I put my money where my mouth is.

Church is where I go to remind me who I am, who I belong to, what I believe, and who I want to be. Church makes me believe again when my hopes and beliefs are dashed by discouragement. Church makes me know that I can ignore my imperfections and move on. Church reminds me that every day is a new day, and that God is always with me.

Itinerary - Touring the U.K.

A good place to find these locations is on Google maps. I don't seem to be able to get a firm link on Google maps to link each of these names, but it's pretty easy to use Google to search for them. We'll be in England most of the time, with a two-day trip to Wales just before we head back to the airport, and we're spending the second week of our trip in Scotland.

Wikipedia seems to give me good links, so I'll use those.

Where I show a link to RCI, if you can't get there somehow, go to http://www.rci.com/RCI/, click the Resort Directory tab, and then enter the resort number in the search box.

April 18 - Leave home

April 19 - Arrive in Manchester

April 20 and 21 - Southport - near Liverpool

April 22 - Chester

April 23 thru 29 - Ellesmere During this week, we'll be the captain (Lauren) and crew (me) of a narrow boat as we sail the canals around Ellesmere.
Here are some interesting links:

English Canals in general. Scroll down until you find Ellesmere - that's where's we're boarding our boat at the Blackwater Meadow Marina. The marina Web site looks like it hasn't been maintained. We'll hope for better maintenance on the boats!!!

We believe our boat will be something like the one shown the Canaltime Priory site. Our boat DOES have an engine. The distinction is that a houseboat doesn't, but a narrowboat does have an engine.

Our boat is a time share exchange through RCI. You don't need to be a member to look it up on RCI - Resort 6985. Click the "Reviews" tab at right of the page to read about other people's experiences.

Wikipedia has a good page about narrowboating.

April 30 and May 1 - York

May 3 through May 8 - Aberfeldy, Scotland This is another great site about Aberfeldy - Judy found it for me last weekend - written by someone who is from there.

We'll be staying at Resort 1585, rented through RCI.

May 9 - Chester

May 10 through 16 - Kingsteignton

We'll be staying at Resort 2718, rented through RCI.

May 17 - Bath

May 18 and 19 - Swansea, Wales

May 20 - Manchester

May 21 - Fly home

A brief glimpse at my garden before I leave

I see so much work that needs to be done in the garden, and my fingers itch to get in the soil and stir it up, prune and trim, and plant new things, but it's not to be again this year because our urge to travel is greater than my urge to garden.

But for now, at this time of year, our garden's need to grow wins out over our neglect. We have bundles of color all over the place. How nice to see all this before we take off and totally leave the garden to its own devices. We've had fairly good rains this year, and it has made a huge difference.

Lauren's azaleas, along the front entry, have outdone themselves again this year. I think we probably need to clip them back at some point to encourage growth of new branches, but Lauren's low-maintenance program - just feeding them from time to time - has certainly kept those blooms coming the last few years. We see buds for a long time, and then one morning or afternoon, we walk out the front door, and there they are - all pink and pretty. Such a lovely sight. Years ago, I tried growing azaleas. They don't like me one bit, but they love Lauren. I don't know if he whispers sweet nothings to them or not, but whatever he does, they bloom themselves silly.

In our back yard, the bougainvillea has outdone itself, too. I've clipped it back twice, and it just doesn't get discouraged, continually popping up clouds of color. We hope to keep it fairly short and stout this year so we won't need to climb a ladder to clip the tops.
Lauren pruned our roses way back a few months ago, and I wondered at the time if they would survive the pruning. Oh, it was definitely the right thing to do. We have blossoms everywhere. I will trim them back pretty good this week, before we leave for the U.K., and hope that helps them out while we're gone.


I would love to have another summer of roses. I always enjoy sitting in our porch room (used as my home office in years past and my sewing studio these last two years). The color soothes and inspires me.


We're going to have four amaryllis blooms this year. These are an accumulation of bulbs I purchased at WalMart at various times, and then we stuck them in the dirt when the bloom was gone. It's kind of fun to watch these pop out again from year to year - sort of a surprise. There's a good chance we're going to miss the blooms this year; but there will be another year.

This year, I hope to learn more about the plants we have and new ones to grow. I keep thinking we'll do a whole makeover of our back yard, but as the days begin to grow hot, that seems like a project to postpone until a spring when we're home. Today and yesterday, the temperatures have reached the 90s. The sun is searing, and the wind is pulling the moisture out of everything it can find. I have a couple succulents I planted last year, and they're looking good. Maybe I can enlarge on that this summer and add some interest to our yard with a variety of hot-weather friendly plants.

Hmmm... Summer may be promising!

Quilting - like reading a book or taking a journey

I can't believe how I can sit and sew for hours on end. It has become my work these days, and I get up each morning and get ready to sit at my machine for hours on end.

As I work, I learn more and my hand gets steadier and more sure about the patterns I want to create. I keep thinking that the best quilt I will ever do will be the last one I create, and I wish I had saved this one (whatever it I'm working on at the time) to do as my last quilt. But such a wish is folly, because in my last days of quilting, whenever that will be, I certainly can't do all the quilts I want to quilt. I have to practice to get better. There's no short cut. Each quilt, then, is just practice for the next quilt - I just have to let it go, and that's the way it's gotta be.


Practice on muslin
Originally uploaded by Suzie Rozie.

This flower was interesting to do. I enlisted Lauren's help in figuring out how to get the curved lines in place on a sheet of drawing paper. He introduced me (or maybe I should say reintroduced me, because there was a time in my life when I knew a little about such things) to a French curve, and so my petals are more or less symmetrical. My process was: Draw the flower on a piece of drawing paper, trace it to a piece of tissue wrapping paper, pin the paper to the muslin, and sew the outline through the paper to the fabric.

I was wondering if that was a permissible thing to do - sew through tissue paper. I find I keep looking for the rules of quilting, and then I immediately remind myself that the rules are whatever I want them to be. Even so, I was relieved when I later came upon a quilting book where the maker had used tracing paper and sewn over it.

Ah, creativity is hard to come by. I look for the recipe, the step-by-step instruction, the rules - and in the middle of my looking, I remember that I need to forget about all that and just go with the flow. That whole idea is funny to me because, historically, I always fail to follow the recipe exactly, yet I continue to look for it so I can disregard it.

Because I hate to waste things, this particular flower, which is about 14 inches in diameter, became one side of a zippered pouch - sort of a large purse. It was a handy little pouch in which to fold my clothes and stick in my carry on for a quick trip to the east coast. I've started new practice samples that will become potholders, just so I won't waste the effort.



Stitching in the ditch
Originally uploaded by Suzie Rozie.

Some things I've learned while working on the pink quilt:

- Stitching in the ditch is a great way to go. This puts the quilt in a really
stable condition so I can remove many of the pins, and then work on any section
of the quilt that I want. The stitching is virtually invisible. This is the first time I've done that. Of course, this is just my third quilt, so almost everything is a first time. I got this idea from a book I browsed.

- It IS OK to sew over thin paper, but it's better to do it on large
or single motifs, not something small and repetitive. That would be a real
drag.

- My needle plate is a zig zag one. I would probably get better results
if I had a straight-stitch needle plate. My bobbin thread keeps popping to the
top.

- Still concerning the bobbin thread coming to the top, it seems that
even the slightest change effects the float of the bobbin thread, whether it be
the speed at which I'm sewing, a glitch in the way the bobbin was wound, the
drag on the top thread. Yuck!

- I'm never going to like the individual stitches, and I'm going to feel like a total failure; but when I look at the whole of the quilt, I am more satisfied. Quilting certainly keeps me humble! It must be good for the character. Quilting will forever keep me from thinking much of myself.

Everything is a new experience in quilting. The urge to give up and say I'll never be able to learn this craft is strong; but I find I just can't give up. I see improvement over time. Ah, if only I knew now what I'll know later. Wouldn't that be nice? Then every quilt could be my best one!

Cherry blossom time in Washington DC

Tidal Basin near Roosevelt Memorial
Originally uploaded by Suzie Rozie.

I've been to Washington DC a number of times, but this year was the first time I've been there when the cherry blossoms were in bloom. It's a sight to remember! It's as though you are surrounded by pink snow, not just on the ground, but beside you and above you. This picture was early Friday morning, April 4 - maybe around 7:00 a.m., on our way home after Glynn picked me up from the airport. The fog surrounding the trees just heightened the sense that I was in a magic land. How lucky I was to be there and see this!

Poway is green ... just so I'll remember

Green Poway
Photo by LDR, 4/5/08, Originally uploaded by Suzie Rozie.

Most of the year, the hills around us have been singed by the searing sun and the dry winds from the desert, and they are golden and brown. Even the bit of green that's left is a dark, dusty, deep green, giving little hint that green exists in this landscape. The winter and spring rains, when we receive them, change everything for a short while, and the green takes my breath away.

From our house, we get only small glimpses of the rolling green hills; but when we're driving through the neighborhood, or walking a nearby trail, these wonderful views pop into our sights as we go up and down the hills. Lauren took this picture from a nearby trail one evening as he was taking his daily walk. It's a picture I had meant to take many times but had never paused long enough to do. I'm so glad he took it.

Just so we can remember, here it is. Poway is beautiful this time of year!