A Quiet Day

Well for the first time we’ve not had internet coverage which meant the daily blog posts couldn't be published.  A weak signal has been captured by the aerial so this is yesterday’s post.  Today’s will be published this afternoon when we stop.
So here is yesterday’s post………………
If anyone thought there was no post on the blog yesterday then you probably didn’t realise for some strange reason Blogger decided to insert the post between the posts on the 20th and 21st.  I didn’t realise this had occurred until Jan asked why there was no post?  That’s when I realised there was a problem.  I had to go into the Blogger setting and change the date on yesterday’s post to accurately reflect the published date.  This rectified the problem.
The first task for the day was my regular weekly Skype call to dear old mum back in Perth, Western Australia.  She purchased a new cordless phone during the week and we now no longer experience the call dropping out after an hour.  A new battery probably would have fixed the problem, however she is determined to spend my inheritance before she heads off to meet the devil!
We must have cruised less than a kilometre today finding a vacant 24 hour mooring Endon where there are CRT facilities.  It was a relatively lazy morning before wandering up the lane to the Toby Carvery in Endon for lunch.  There was nothing wrong with the meal but the service was slow.  Jan had eaten her lunch by the time I returned to our table with mine.

The walk to the Toby Carvery took us over a railway line.  Actually there’s nothing particularly unusual about that as many of the canals have a railway somewhere nearby.  The canal surveyors looked for the most level route to minimise the expense of building locks or major earthworks.  The railway builders just copied them! 
This particular railway didn’t appear to be used very much.

The track has been sprayed to kill the weeds but the sleepers are timber and the rail is fish-plated.  The railhead has rust on it.  All signs of low traffic levels.  We crossed it again in Endon and this time it was more apparent that the line is disused.

Ironic that the railway probably replaced the canal and yet the canal has survived!  However some further research has revealed this is the closed Churnet Valley Railway and there are plans for its restoration with the Churnet Valley Railway Company reporting plans to reopen the line to Endon.  But even more research indicates reopening the line between Stoke and Caldon is being done by Moorland & City Railways.  They plan to return the line to commercial use.  Just like the canal, the railway may once again return to use!
Back at Waiouru there was time for some maintenance.  The faces on the oak veneer interior rear steps are becoming scuffed and stained by the toe and heel of shoes entering and exiting the boat.  Today I used the two non slip pads we purchased Crick to cover the face of the lower two steps.

The pads were going on the cratch gunwales but we’ll now have to buy four more.  Two fir the cratch and another two for the remaining stern steps.