Well, as you can see by the title of this post a miracle did occur and when we got up this morning it was not raining! Taking advantage of this fact we got up early and got away about 7-30am again. The plan was to travel 8 miles and 5 locks to Penkridge.
You can also see by the title of this post the dry conditions were not to last and after about half an hour it started raining. We had started so we would finish and we continued on to Penkridge.
For the first part of the trip there were no locks for me to do so I occupied myself by playing with the ironing pile! This had been residing on the dinette for quite a while. I would have known this even if I had not seen it there because of the clothes contained therein. My flowery blouse for example which I last wore when we first arrived in Gloucester for example!
Anyway, I had finished the ironing by the time we arrived at Gailey where we stopped for water above the lock. I was going to empty the loo but the elsan was out of order – again. This elsan is notorious for being out of action.
As we were waiting for the water tank to fill 2 boats appeared going the same way as us. One pulled in front to get water and the other pulled in quite a long way back. We thought they were waiting for a tap to come free. There was a boat coming up the lock and we thought we were in luck but the boat behind didn’t want water and went in before we had finished filling.
So we had to follow them all the way to Penkridge and although there were boats coming the other way they always benefitted the boat in front and not us. By the time we arrived in Penkridge we were wet and it was really cold too. We were ready to stop.
We decided to do Filance lock as well making the total for the day 6 and moored near the winding hole above Penkridge lock. It was still raining, quite hard now and I kept my waterproofs on to walk in to town.
I had remembered that there is a rather good bakery near the newagents in town and instead of getting the paper from the Coop to avoid all temptation I went to said newsagents and then the bakers. I managed to keep my purchases to a minimum (not) and came out with 2 teacakes, 2 scones and 2 Chelsea buns, naughty!
While I was doing this Ken was in the butchers buying half a cow! After a brief visit to the Coop we headed for The Boat Inn and had a couple of pints and a moan about their choice of music. They must have heard us because after a while they changed it to something we liked!
Back at the boat the Chelsea buns soon disappeared with a cup of tea and then the half a cow was turned into a lovely casserole which soon went the same way as the Chelsea buns.
I think there was a short period of time during which it stopped raining but normal service has been restored now.
Tomorrow we are going to Tixall Wide where we are hopefully going to stop for a couple of days – but you never know.
