Thursday 12th August
Today we remained at Whittington and I undertook three jobs on the boat, Repairing a magnetic door catch, re-calibrating the battery monitor and something else which now escapes me, but it was all done by 10:30am!
Joy again had her on-line art class in the afternoon, and we spent the rest of the day not doing much at all.
Friday 13th August
A boat came quietly past at 6:45 this morning, but we didn’t get away until the more civilised hour of 9:00am. It was an uneventful journey with easy-to-operate locks.
On reaching Kinver we had to wait for another boat to ascend the lock before us, then, in order not to be on their tail, we stopped to dispose of rubbish and fill up with water and both of us got soaked in the process when a hose connector came off!
Soon after Hyde Lock we came to a dead stop and discovered a sheet of canvas (probably from a cratch cover) wrapped around the propeller.
At the next few locks a boats were either entering or leaving locks which was to our advantage.
At Stewponey (yes really!) volunteer lock-keepers were on duty who closed gates for us and we passed the boat we saw at Kinver lock filling with water so we snuck past!
Three more locks and we were were passing the wonderful ‘John’s Garden’, John is apparently the owner of the adjacent Ashwood Nursery.
We tied up at Greensforge soon after 1:00pm just in good time to have lunch at the Navigation inn and spent the rest of the afternoon watching the world go by and indeed boats were very few and far between. The evening was spent indulging in Britbox as the TV signal was blocked by the high sandstone bank opposite.
Saturday 14th August
Today we were away from Greensforge by 10 and progressed through 3 normal locks, at Hinksford Lock a fisherman had installed himself right in the middle of the lock mooring and was quite grumpy when us and the following boat wanted to tie up.
We then had Botterham Staircase to negotiate, where two locks are combined, there were quite a few boats here so we had to wait our turn (one boat up – one boat down) the middle gates leaked badly drenching the front of our boat including our cushions!
Soon after it started to rain so coming through Wombourne, we moored outside The Round Oak, but haven’t patronised their beer garden as yet, surprise, surprise, maybe tomorrow if it’s fine enough.
