Saturday 24th August
There was an unusual occurrence this morning – we left our mooring before 8 am! I say we left, I actually mean Ken left – I was still getting dressed at the time. We have had a trip of 7.5 miles and 5 locks which took exactly 4 hours.We were following a single hander so progress was a little bit slow at the locks but it wasn’t a problem.
When we arrived at Penkridge the first mooring we found was outside The Cross Keys, near Filance Bridge. We titted about for a while trying to moor avoiding some young lads who were fishing and just got the ropes on when Roy from Nb Gerald appeared (we met him on the Weaver a couple of years ago) and said there is going to be live music at the Cross Keys tonight. As we were practically outside there we decided to move through the bridge and moor on the 5 day moorings before Filance Lock. We ended up just in front of the single hander we had been following.
Having got ourselves sorted we went into town (although they call it a village it seems more like a town) and went to the butchers for sausages and eggs. Then we went to The White Hart to watch the football. All went well to start with and we sat there with a couple of other old boys watching and being able to hear the commentary when all Hell broke loose.
Three coaches pulled up outside and within minutes the whole pub had filled with Liverpool supporters on the way to Villa, aaargh! The decibel level went sky high (you couldn’t understand a word they were saying mind) and to see the tv (even though there were 3 of them) became impossible without a great deal of neck craning and other contortion!
We thought they wouldn’t be there long as it was 1 pm and their match started at 3 pm, right? Wrong, it was a 5-30 pm kick off and they were stopping over in Penkridge for 3 hours! Things thinned out a bit when some of them went off to another pub but unfortunately a group near us decided to start playing darts which meant they were standing in front of all 3 screens at some point and sometimes in front of all 3 at the same time! Ho Hum.
After the football (we nearly managed to watch) was over we went off to the Coop to get a paper, passing a newsagents and bakery on the other side of the road. I made a comment about how we should have gone to the newsagents then we could have had a look in the bakery as well but we tried to put temptation behind us. Fate stepped in however because the Coop hadn’t got any copies of the I left. This necessitated a trip back to newsagents and so I accidentally fell into the bakers on the way past and got some lovely scones (4 for £2-10) two of which we had with jam this afternoon, yum!
Tomorrow we are going to Tixall Wide to meet Mick and Cathy. We can see the first of the 7 locks we have got to do from here so if Ken drives off before I am ready tomorrow he will be doing it on his own!
