Woke up to a complete change in the weather, cloudy and grey. It stayed overcast until 2:15 when it started to rain. Several boaters we spoke to said that really heavy rain is forecast for tomorrow, so we pressed on until just after 4:00 then stopped for the night.
Yesterday Heddi hurt her back while closing a particularly heavy lock gate. So today I have been working semi-single handed. The first four locks were deep, double width ones with viscous flows from the top paddles, requiring us rope up. So progress was rather slow. Lots of boats going the other way meant that we didn’t have to turn any locks though.
We are back on the more familiar Midlands narrow lock system now. Instead of going back the way we came, we are going to go via the Coventry and Birmingham & Fazely canals, then along the Tame Valley canal and via Wolverhampton to get back to Kinver. This will take us on some other parts of the system that we haven’t done before.
The fire is now lit, and it won’t be long before the wine’s in the glass!