It’s cruising time.

Hi Friends and Followers.

We have left our home mooring and are now in cruising mode.

We left the Saltisford Arm at 8.45 am to meet up with Caroline and Ray on Narrowboat Tranquil Daze, who we had planned to share the Hatton Flight with.

9am we were in the first lock and try as I may I could not close the offside bottom gate by about a foot.

Keith and Ray tried flushing the obstruction out. When that failed we got the grappling hook out and although I was hooking onto something, I could not move it.

Keith tried with the pole, he reckoned he could feel a lot of stones in the way, but like me he could not move them either. Just as we were about to give up hope, one of the C&RT volunteers came along, he was off to make bird boxes, but before leaving us he very kindly rang the land crew to ask them to come out and give us a hand, which they duly did. A very nice gentleman and lady came to our assistance. The gentleman had a long handled Kebb and after a lot of heaving and pushing, he managed to move brick rubble and large stones. Finally after over an hour we got the gates closed and the pound filled.

We were on our way. Keith had breasted the boats up, so Ray went ahead and set the locks and Caroline and I worked at shutting the gates and dropping the paddles (Not literally, we wound them down). It all worked like a dream and before we knew it we were up outside the cafe.

At the last lock we said our “Goodbye’s”, because we were going on, Caroline and Ray were stopping for water.

We really were a great team, they had never done the flight so fast. Keith has done it in two and a half hours but that is a whole different story.

The weather forecasters were predicting strong winds, so we decided we would not moor under any large trees, so carried on through Shrewley Tunnel. Thankfully nothing wanted to use the tunnel in the other direction, because our tunnel light had decided to fail, this was our fault because we had not checked it before leaving the mooring. Luckily the tunnel is only a short one and we were soon out into daylight and on our way. We stopped near to bridge 60 before mooring up for the day. I had made Leek and Potato Soup on Tuesday, so I heated that through and we had it with bread and butter, it was whilst going to stir the soup I noticed the solar panel board was flashing an error at me, which did not look to promising. After lunch, Keith checked the wiring and did a reset, hey presto it worked phew. Next on the hit list for repair was the headlamp. It turned out to be a dodgy bulb and as we carry spares it was no big deal, but we are now thinking we should at sometime replace the lamp, because it is very old and tatty. It has done us well since 2007, when we recycled it from another boat. The owner was going to throw the lamp away and we said we would love it for Hadar and it has been good to us for all these years, but we may think about replacing it. So all dramas were over come and now I can put my feet up for the rest of the day. Ha ha well you know me I will find something to do, I have more crochet to get on with, so I think my feet will be going up and I will get some more of my latest blanket done. My Sciatica will be glad of a rest as it has kicked off a bit, but thankfully my ribs and sternum seem to be alright for the moment, having given them a workout on the Hatton Flight.