Exciting Day.

This morning it was a nice start to the day with the sun shining. Paddy and I walked up on to the footbridge at the new  Kings Orchard Marina, which is slowly being filled with water. We wondered why there was so much water gushing down the by-weirs as we travelled down the T&M.

It is nice to see this marina back under construction as it had been halted due to the lack of water last year. Apparently C&RT asked the constructors not to fill the marina with the water shortages on, so work stopped.

Travelled 14.32 miles, worked 2 locks in a time of 7 hours and 5 minutes.

We left our mooring at 8.05am and it was lovely in the sunshine.

We passed the plastic tunnels at Whittington.

At Peels Wharf NB Electra with Bernie and Leigh on board were taking on water. NB Electra has the same engine as Hadar a National DA2.

Approaching Fazeley Juction.

We stopped just before the River Tame aqueduct to sell some coal and they passed us again. But we caught up with them at Glascote locks where there was a queue forming due to the bottom lock only having one functioning ground paddle. This gave us a great opportunity to meet Bernie and Leigh, who now own Electra, to have a good chat and compare engines. We met a few boats a long the way with it being a Saturday and the weather played its part as we had April Showers and gusty winds, yes I know it is May.

The other DA2 engine in Electra. Keith went and dug out the information that we got from the Anson Engine Museum, and to our amazement this engine was also in the same batch of 18 built at Trojan of Croydon as our engine. How spooky is that, this of course meant even more excitement.

I helped Leigh work the first lock to get them underway, they returned the favour at the second lock as they waited for us. After almost an hour and a half we finally made it in to the bottom lock and were on our way.

It was onward past Samuel Barlows.

Onward to the sanitary station at the bottom of Atherstone Locks, where we emptied the toilet cassette and got rid of rubbish, we will take on water at Braunston because the water tap was busy.

Along with Bernie and Leigh we decided to moor up just after the sanitary station because the wind was beginning to blow a hooley and with it being ten past three, neither of us fancied doing the locks today. Having moored up we unloaded ten bags of coal to weigh down NB Electra’s bow and again got chatting about our engines and their differences in sound and lock. It really has been an exciting day, because we never thought we would ever see the only other DA2 we know of on the cut.

Before I sign off for the day I want to wish our good friend Elaine off of NB Patience a speedy recovery from her broken leg and much love to David who has been organising everything to fit around Elaine being in hospital. Mend quickly Elaine xxx