20-26th August - in UK again!

This travel back & forth to UK could become a bit of a chore you know, especially as we keep boating further away from Calais!  Still, this was hardly an optional trip, here is the cause laid out clearly:

You can see the big bend catching the light very artistically!  This was our morning before going off to drop it into the very excellent Steel Developments in London, who turned it around in 3 days, Tues lunchtime to Friday lunchtime!  Amazing, and such a nice job.  So then Wednesday you'd think we'd had enough driving, but no, I thought "Why not just pop up to Lincoln to visit Francis?".  Obvious why really, but we went!

And what a lovely place Lincoln is, we decided to wander around a bit, and fell into the pub behind us!

The view just got better, so as we were wandering around after our meal it looked even better:

We returned to Francis's appartment where he serenated us with his guitar - what a wonderful thing it is not to have internet, TV, videogaming or other electronic entertainment:

Next morning Nik & I had the morning free in Lincoln, so first a lovely English breakfast!

I just wanted to show you an unusual property we found;  I just hope he postmen there have a sense of humour and don't just tear the letters in half:

The weather was super so instead of going inside the cathedral, we visited instead the nearby Bishop's Palace, which must have been quite something in its day:

The reason we were hanging around in Lincoln was that, surprise surprise, the new propellor we'd ordered (but didn't really expect to arrive in time) had come in, along with a new bearing and some blacking, so we had ahead of us a long, but very beautiful trip across the Penines to Biddulph to collect these items.  All successful, but it was a late return to Marius's, so we went out with Tad to a pub Marius had recently discovered, not telling you where tho'!

The Friday was the trip to London to pick up the mended prop, then the weekend was largely shopping and recovering enough strength for the journey back.  But before that we had the Bank Holiday Monday (that's why we didn't travel back until Tuesday) and Uffiington Fete, a great bit of Old England.  Want a brass band?

Sorry, Silver Band.  They were very good, from my old stomping ground too tho' I didn't know any of them.  We decided to take off, quite literally:

From which helicoper the fete could be seen in perspective:

That's it just there, the load of white tents etc.  We had a super time, meeting up with Bern's sister and family, and the weather was again uncommon good for a British Bank Holiday.  Next day off to Eurotunnel, with the quite large car packed with props and stuff!