Sitting Out a Sunday.

With no need to be anywhere, and no No.1 daughter aboard, we had a lay in and drank tea 'til it felt time to make a move.

After breakfast was dealt with we set off for a walk into town for the Sunday newspaper and a few other bits and pieces. I think that Newark is like a mini York, without the Vikings, Romans and Japanese/Chinese. There are some lovely buildings and the local council are doing their best. It seems the spike in COVID here has been caused by an outbreak in a food factory and most of the workers do not live in the town. So with luck the place wont get a local lock down.

We were heading for Boyes. Southerners may not know this shop but it is better than Woolworth's was (In my opinion) and always well worth a visit. Helen wanted some cotton yarn for a project and one or two other bits and there is always something you didn't know you needed.

Just up the Great North Road from the Trent Bridge is the Ossington Bridge. It looks very impressive and is known as Ossington Lodge. It was completed in 1882 and was designed by architects Ernest George and Peto to the account of Viscountess Ossington who was the daughter of the 4th Duke of Portland and was married to the speaker of the House of Commons. It's original name was the Ossington Coffee Palace and was built as a Temperance Hotel to lure folk away from the pubs of the market town. It was designed as a 16th Century Hostelry. It had a coffee room, assembly rooms, club room, reading room, billiard room and kitchens. Upstairs were dormitories for travelers. Outside there was stabling for forty horses, a cart shed, bowling green and a tea garden. Over its life it has been several things like an hotel and in both World Wars it has been taken over by the War Ministry. The building, garden wall and summerhouse are all listed.

It seems that it has a reputation of being haunted. The story goes that the portrait that had always hung in the building started to fly off the wall the building was sold and started to sell liquor. Bottles and crates of drinks seemed to fall off shelves etc and beer barrels were found empty with puddle. When workmen were brought in to make alterations a three day job took over two weeks due to them not working due to being scared and having their tools moved and messages been left! Maybe we wont be going for a pizza!

The day has been gloomy and wet at times so we may not step out of the boat again, but hopefully the rain will stop and we can go for a pint. After reading the paper and listening to the radio for a while I started to get itchy again and thought of a couple of jobs I could do. I had thought of a way of piping the fan for the compost loo directly to the outside vent through the roof space. It seems to have worked well and is even quieter now. Flushed with success I decided to take the ceiling mount for the stove flue off to check if it would reveal where the slight leak is from. No such luck there. It may be the damp and gloomy weather but I thought I had better get it sorted in case we needed the fire so re-sealed the flue outside and put everything back together. All in all a nice lazy Sunday. We will be off tomorrow. We have heard our first thunder today after it being foretold for our area for the best part of a week, and it was only a rumble really.