02/08/21 to 03/08/21 Ipswich

The kids had yet again packed their own clothes. Last year AJ had delegated putting his packing cubes into the big bag to the ever helpful Esmé and ended up with no pants and socks.... this year he learned from his mistakes and made sure all his cubes were in the big bag himself. The only problem was he packed trousers that he hadn't worn for a year and had now outgrown! 

We decided a trip upriver to Ipswich would allow us to rectify the situation, with the added bonus that we could call in at Fox's marina en route and visit the chandlery there. Sadly Marinestore have closed their Burnham shop and there aren't many chandleries in Leeds so Patrick was having withdrawal symptoms... particularly as his two old pairs of deck shoes went walk abouts on our last trip down south.

It was nice to venture up the Orwell again... it used to be a regular haunt but less so these days. 

As we passed Levington we spotted the distinctive green transom of "Traigh" and paused for a while to catch up with Dan Tribe who was getting ready to head back to Burnham. 

Onwards towards Fox's we appreciated the lovely scenery and enjoyed going under the Orwell Bridge.. I'm not sure why but passing under big bridges always seems quite special.

It took a few goes to raise Fox's either on VHF or Mobile but eventually we got agreement to pop in for 1/2 hour to visit the Chandlery. It was a somewhat tight berth and I tried to call back to request one where I had some confidence I could exit from without bashing other boats but there was again no answer so with Patrick's confidence in me we headed into the berth. The kids stayed put on electronics whilst Patrick and I enjoyed mooching in the shop. 1/2 hour later we emerged with 2 pairs of deck shoes, some sailing gloves, anchor chain markers, diesel bug treatment, 2 joker valves and 2 ice creams for the kids.

As per Patrick's predictions we extricated ourselves from the difficult berth without fuss and continued up the river to Ipswich.

 We just had a short wait for the lock whilst a Thames Barge exited Ipswich and then we were in. Again we had trouble raising the marina.. Ipswich Haven this time but eventually we were allocated a berth and were soon tied up alongside.

After a quick lunch we headed into Town.... first up Primark for AJ some trousers and then the boys returned to the boat and the girls kept shopping. We had a lovely afternoon including raiding charity shops for books and games for the boat.

On our return we found Patrick unloading anchor chain from the boat ready to fit the new markers. After a 5 minute rest I gave him a hand and then sanity checked his system for re-marking the chain at 5m intervals. Green worth 5m and blue 20m. I'd guessed wrong though at how many we needed as I thought we had 50m of chain but that was the old 10mm chain and we now have 80m of 8mm chain!

AJ cooked us a lovely tea on board and I enjoyed a pleasant evening reading!

After  a small lie in Patrick got on with more boat jobs (with Esmé's help) whilst I booked tickets for a Lego exhibition in town.

The kids loved playing on the "question mark" before we headed for the exhibition.

The exhibition was Lego models showing moments in history. It was much smaller than I anticipated but quite good nevertheless.

The mask is a model of the mask dug up at Sutton Hoo... we'll hopefully see the real thing tomorrow!

We finished off our time in Ipswich with lunch at Pizza Express courtesy of Tesco's Clubcard vouchers!

Finally we returned to Laurin and made our way back to Shotley. 

As we approached Felixstowe Docks I noticed the Evergiven, infamous for blocking the Suez canal earlier this year. Patrick didn't quite believe me but when we got back to Shotley and I caught up on the news the BBC had published an article on its arrival.