rough winds

Late summer up on the Long Pound has morphed into autumn, with some lively gales stirring up the canal and turning the hard-baked towpath back to mud. It's getting time to be dropping down through Devizes and into the Shire, where the gales don't blow quite so harshly and they offer the occasional blown-down tree as compensation; as long as they don't land on your boat, they can be a welcome source of firewood.

This was quite the sunrise, though. And an hour later it was just a memory and the sky turned grey and the rain set in again. And I lit the stove to get the ache out of my shoulders.