Arrived last night to find the boat warmer than pervious visits and the battery topped up so the heater and the trickle charger are obviously working.

A fairly lazy start, we set off about nineish heading for Kinver, mainly to give the engine a bit of a run and to get a pumpout. Stopped breifly at Sainsbury’s to get some food, then stopped at the Wolverley visitor’s mooring for a “full english” cooked breakfast. The first one on board since early November!

The weather was cold, but bright a sunny. There were still patches of ice on the canal in places, though not very thick and a bit slushy, so not likely to do any damage to the blacking.

There was lots of rubbish, logs, fallen branches, leaves etc accumulated at the top gates of each lock. The top gate paddle of Woverley lock wouldnt close properly as there was so much junk wedged in there. It’s very obvious that the BW bankside staff just aren’t around to carry out routine maintenance. This is clearly false economy on BWs part as the work will have to be done sometime, and the longer it’s left the more likely it is that damage to the infrastucture will occur. At some locks the rubbish blocking the bywash weirs had raised the water level enough that it was washing over the towpath at the bridges.

We did the pumpout at the DIY machine, winded just above Hyde lock and then back down to the Kinver visitors mooring. The moorings were surprisingly busy for the time of year, with only two available spaces.

We went for a walk in the afternoon. Along the towpath up to Hyde lock then followed a lane and onto a footpath which took us across some fields and out onto playing fields by the Community Centre. This wasnt the way we had intended to go and we must have taken a wrong turn at some point! Eventually we found the High St and made our way back to the boat.