Monday 23rd September
Today dawned dull and drizzly but the forecast was encouraging and promised brightness later. We had intended to make an earlyish start but our plans went slightly awry. Firstly, as Ken was outside getting the boat ready to leave Mick and Sue came past with their dog. This resulted in him having a fairly long chat with them.
When we were finally ready to leave we had to wait for a boat to come through the bridge before we could set off. Then when we were going through the bridge a boat just the other side pulled out in front of us and crept along in tick over all the way to Bagnall Lock.
Ordinarily this wouldn’t have been a problem but it transpired that we had developed a problem with our throttle and our version of tick over seemed to be rather faster than usual so we had to keep stopping to let him get ahead. When we reached Bagnall Lock it was open so they went straight in and when I arrived on the lock the woman said they hadn’t seen us when they pulled out in front of us! Must be blind I thought but said not to worry.
When we got to Fradley they stopped for water so we passed them. As usual the middle of Fradley was frantic and when we came out of Junction Lock we were third in the queue for Middle Lock. By the time we got in the lock there were several boats behind us as well, some had come off the Coventry. Despite this I was operating the lock by myself!
The whole 7 mile, 8 lock journey from Alrewas to Armitage took 4.5 hours, which we didn’t think was too bad. We decided to stop at The Plum Pudding in Armitage – a) Because it is a good stop over place before Rugeley (and has Bass at £2-60 a pint) and b) We really needed to address our sticky throttle problem.
Who should be moored up outside The Plum Pudding? Mick and Cathy of course. They got here yesterday and have been to Rugeley on the bus today so they don’t have to stop there to go shopping tomorrow on their way to Tixall. We are also going to Tixall tomorrow but we are going to stop in Rugeley en route to do our shopping.
After we moored up Ken had a look at our throttle and discovered the bolts holding the linkage had worked loose and one had actually fallen out! No wonder things were a bit erratic! As luck would have it we had some bolts the right size and everything was soon tightened up.
So now it was time to go to the pub, obviously. Before we went, on the way through the bathroom, I saw the shower doors were open so I tried to close them and one nearly fell off! I don’t know how that happened it just became unseated at the top. Fortunately I managed to fix it later.
Tomorrow we are going to Tixall via Morrison’s in Rugeley.
