Wild Garlic, sticks and raining.

Rain was forecast for Bank Holiday Monday, so when I woke from a good nights sleep to find the sun shining through the pigeon box port holes I was pleasantly surprised, of course the sunshine did not last long. So with the thought of rain coming, it was important to get the outside jobs done first.

Once up and about, I took Paddy for his morning walk, whilst Keith cooked us a breakfast of Poached Eggs and Bacon on Toast mmm and very nice it was too.

I made sure both stoves were stoked up for the day, before setting off up the towpath with my stick bucket and a plastic bag for the Wild Garlic leaves I was going to pick. Some of the other names for Wild Garlic are 'bear's garlic', 'devil's garlic', 'gypsy's onions' and 'stinking Jenny'. I collected my sticks first filling bucket again, I then steadily walked down the embankment to pick the Wild Garlic leaves. You can also use the bulbs, but if you do this they are only tiny and once the bulbs are dug up, there will be no garlic for next year, so best to leave the bulbs alone and pick the leaves instead. I love the smell of garlic, the wood was full of the perfume.

Back on the boat, I washed the Wild Garlic leaves and cut them up, I sweated off the leaves with some leek, added the chopped Mushrooms, added some stock and allowed it to simmer away before adding some Chicken thickener, hey presto soup for lunch. Whilst I did this, Keith got on with changing the rope on the front fender, which had broken, leaving our front fender hanging off yesterday as we came across the aqueduct. Just as he was about to begin the job outside the promised rain began to fall, so he bought the fender inside and worked on it.

As the morning wore into early afternoon it was time to bake some bread to eat with the soup I had made earlier. I a not boasting when I say the soup was yummmmmmmy and I will be trying it again or a similar version, maybe with potato. The recipe list is endless with Wild Garlic, so why not give it a go.

It has rained on an off throughout the afternoon, the boat traffic has been at fever pitch, with hire boats and private boats coming and going. Many of the private boaters are probably only out for the weekend.

Oh do you remember my new freezer, which drained the batteries a while ago. Well on Saturday whilst on the electric at Llangollen, we filled the new freezer with cartons of water, and left it to freeze. Since being off the electric, the freezer seems to be working absolutely fine, and the batteries have been coping as well, so maybe just maybe the new cables we fitted last December have done the trick. The new battery management system is also working well, we know exactly how much life we have in our batteries every day, which is very reassuring. I am now looking forward to putting some food in my new freezer.

Well that is another Bank Holiday over with and on the whole the weather treated us well. We are looking forward to heading off to Chirk tomorrow.