Well, well,well no rain today, what’s going on? It has been lovely weather and we have done the 9 miles and 6 locks from Penkridge to Tixall Wide. We are moored almost opposite the Tixall Hall Gatehouse.
We got off to a good start because when we got to the first lock, near the sanitary station someone had just come up the lock and left the gates open. He was filling with water and emptying his loo and I suspect he was going to turn round and go back down afterwards which was why he left the lock open.
Anyway, we went straight into the lock because we had got our water yesterday and while Ken let it down I went to the sanitary station and did our loo.
We only met one boat coming the other way until we had done 5 of the locks and were on what I call the boring bit between Deptmore and Tixall when all Hell broke loose and we were meeting boat after boat after boat. Much to Ken’s disgust these meetings were taking place in narrow bits, near moored boats or under bridges! I was inside at the time hoovering and mopping so I couldn’t hear the moaning and groaning.
When we got to Tixall Lock there was a boat going down and a CRT barge waiting. When it was their turn they went into the lock, picked up a load of eco edging and left some wooden poles on the lockside and then backed out again.
By the time they had done this 3 other boats had turned up to wait behind us. The crew from the Anglo Welsh hire boat came up and did the lock for us which was nice.
The boats already moored at Tixall were very well spaced and we found a good spot with low armco so I can replace some blacking tomorrow. We have done so much travelling this year and when we haven’t been travelling the weather has been so shite or the moorings haven’t been suitable so we have not been able to upkeep the paint and blacking as we had intended.
Actually I had to do some emergency remedial work on the red paint as soon as we got here. For some reason, which I haven’t a clue what happened, a huge section of the port gunwale had been totally rubbed down to the metal! It’s funny because neither of us was aware of any particular scraping or grinding noises and we had our fenders down. Anyway it’s just a bloody nuisance!
After this unsheduled maintenance work we walked in to Great Haywood to get a paper and post a birthday card then we went to The Clifford Arms where we patriotically partook of a rather nice pint or two of Adnams Broadside. Mind you, most of the first one of Ken’s pints ended up on the table, down my jeans, down his trousers, over my jumper and in my handbag as he wrestled with a rather dodgily fitted table top in the garden!
We returned to the boat and had the scones which I bought yesterday in Penkridge, very nice they were too.
Tomorrow we are doing useful things (probably) and Saturday we are intending to get going again.
