Come on in, the water's lovely

Well here we are hunkered down in Boroughbridge enjoying/enduring amazingly regular maelstroms that are threatening to raise the levels on the (literally) adjacent River Ure and so give us our first flooding incident (how ironic it should prove to be if we get flooded in a motorhome and not a narrowboat). But despite the pants weather, we are having a lot of fun with the Dolce Gusto coffee machine in overdrive, the heating on warp factor 10 and shameless exploitation of the club site’s excellent wireless connection.

We arrived mid Saturday afternoon with joyous hearts having just discovered that Costa Coffee are apparently taking over much of the Little Chef fiefdom. So not only do we have Costa available at the new Wetherby services on the Al, we now have it at the old Moto services at Ferrybridge too. My cup runneth over…We were given the warmest welcome ever by the site manager, who proceeded to put us on the best possible pitch with the easiest of all routes out to the dog walk – plus views over the aforementioned Ure, so a result all round really. Oh and not forgetting the fenced dog exercise area which has meant Monty has got to run around like a loon for a change – his ‘run-at-full-tilt-and-stop-and-sit-in-one-motion-in-front-of-mummy-for-a-treat’ manoeuvre has to be seen to be believed. He’s got some nasty grass stains on his bum mind…

In the one window of nice weather yesterday, we headed off for some more geocaching fun. As there’s nothing better than combining motorhoming with our other great love, canals and rivers, we set our GPS device to the Milby Lock cache. After a lovely walk down and through the town, we hit upon a footpath that took us straight to a not-seen-one-quite-like-that-before lock with the cache duly located just beyond. We both wondered whether we’d ever get to go through here in our own boat? Looking at the tree trunks that have been hammering down past us today, I can’t help thinking discretion might be the better part of valour. Having bagged a further two caches en route, we repaired to the van before the evening storm duly arrived right on cue. We’d elected to take Arthur and Ranger with us and after a five mile stint they were completely zonked, as were we, so there wasn’t much for it but to sit back, drink yet more coffee and finish off my book. One other piece of dog-related news – on our travels we met our first ever Borzoi. A curious but noble looking creature that looks like a greyhound that’s been put through a mangle – everything stretched and elongated and on a much bigger frame than our regular mutts. Another one to add to my spotters' book.

The coming week will be dominated by work-related trips to Harrogate and Castleford, that is, if we are not swept downstream first. You start to worry when you see your fellow campers walking around in mask and flippers…