It was another reasonably early start today and we have travelled another 9 miles and 9 locks from Wolverley. We eventually stopped at Greensforge. We had intended to go to Swindon but progress was rather slower than we had anticipated so, finding the ony 48hr mooring above the lock unoccupied we decided to stop.
Progress was slow for a number of reasons including – lots of moored boats to go slowly past and after the first lock it became apparent that we were following another boat so we had to set most of the rest of locks. Or we had to wait while someone came down them.
At Whittington Lock we waited for a share boat with a single hander to come down then when we were in the lock l tried to close the gates and there was something stuck between them so there was about a 2 inch gap.
Opening and closing the gates twice more, then opening them and running water down while they were open cleared what ever it was and we got underway again.
We also stopped for water at Stewponey which took about another 20 minutes or so. When we got to Greensforge Lock we were just about ready to stop. We had to go to the sanitary station and it was while we were there that we noticed the free 48hr mooring between the sanitary station mooring and the Permit Holders.
Actually a lot of the Permit Holder moorings are also unoccupied here at the moment. This is a trend we have noticed more and more recently in places we have visited before where the Permit Holder moorings used to be full. Kinver ones are still full but most other places are undersubscribed.
We moored up and tested the tv to see if we could get a signal. It isn’t great for being able to get a tv signal along this end of the canal and we did struggle last night having to retune between matches for different stations. Managing to get some sort of signal and with the football just about to start we decided to watch it on ITV plus one and go to the pub! However they had the football on in the pub so that was a bonus because we watched the first half there then came back to the boat for the second half. The signal on ITV just about managed to hold out for this but not for the next game which Ken turned off before half time as it was becoming a right pain in the arse. Fortunately the later one is on BBC which we have got a good signal for!
In the pub we had some very good beer called Black Country Special, lovely. It was a bit strong so it was a good job we didn’t watch the whole match there or I may have fallen off the stool!
While we were in the pub it started raining (again) and has not stopped since. There was a dad and his two young lads fishing in front of us and none of them had coats but they didn’t seem bothered and stopped until about 5-30pm.
We’re not sure where we are going to end up tomorrow.
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