Steamboats invade Shardlow.

We caught the Sky-bus into Derby on Saturday afternoon, a very good service which runs every half hour between Leicester and Derby. Bottle visited the Orange shop while I escaped for a bit of retail therapy and managed to bag a couple of bargains. Derby has a massive shopping centre, Westfield, and two indoor markets as well as many little side streets crammed with specialist shops. We needed to stop for lunch and luckily managed to find Wethrspoons with the help of one of the city guides who patrol the precincts.

While we were sitting in the cratch enjoying coffee and phoning our family in the sunshine several little steamboats glided silently by. When we arrived at the Clock Warehouse pub for Sunday lunch we found that they had all congregated there. Apparently they meet up at Shardlow to have lunch in one of the four pubs once a year. We noticed that one clever boater was making use of his firebox to cook his beef burgers!

   

The beautiful woodwork was immaculate and everything was highly polished and very shiny. After lunch we strolled around the nearby Heritage Museum which is crammed with local history, most of it being canal related. During our afternoon walkabout the village we noticed that the little boats were mooring up and disembarking to ride around a garden track on a miniature steam train.

Then it was time for them all to depart and some of them sounded their whistles as they went by. They all looked as though they were having great fun.