Tuesday 14 August 2012

Mammoth trip to Penkridge

Well certainly mammoth for us as we don't normally do long days, but having stopped short of our target yesterday we had some catching up to do........extra 3 hours in fact.   We don't normally have rigid targets either but we wanted to be in Penkridge for me to catch a train to London tomorrow so onward we went.   Off just before 7 and met only one other boat until about 0845 when the world seemed to awaken.  At one point there seemed to be boats everywhere but no long hold ups at the locks like yesterday.
The CRT has done a good job of altering all the signs but missed this one!
At Great Haywood we turned right down onto the Staffs and Worcester canal with the eventual possible aim of Worcester and even Tewkesbury and the virgin passage of the now opened Droitwich canal(virgin for us that is!).  We passed Tixall Wide which had tons of mooring space but sadly we were not stopping.......
At the second lock the boat in front (who had been travelling inordinately slowly and we don't do fast...)
had a problem getting into the lock.  He seemed to have hit something as he went in and lost all power and had to be pulled  in.   When it was my turn I went very gingerly and also out of gear as much as possible but thankfully no problem.......they stopped at the top to sort out their problem and we have not seen them since......   By this time we had a queue behind us.....best place for a queue to be!

Some people make a tremendous effort with their back gardens
We eventually reached Penkridge and there was plenty of mooring space opposite the park homes below the lock, although by evening it was very full.
Big mama..Geoff's photo of the day!
15.85 miles, 8 locks, 7hours 29 min

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