Long day

Pulled the pins at 9.30 and set off in quite a strong breeze. Negotiated Lapworth junction and we were on our way up the Lapworth flight and every single one of those locks was against us. Thank goodness they were all near enough together for me to be able to get Paul in one lock and then go and empty the next one and this routine worked really well. Felt strange to be in Narrow locks again took us 3 hours to do the 19 locks. We are now moored up by bridge 19 and the The Blue Bell Cider house, that's handy as I am a cider drinker, know where I will be tomorrow evening. Also passed a sign for a bakery at bridge 20 so in the morning I will walk back to the bakery for some proper bread and maybe a nice cake. All in all we were on the go for 5.7 hours which is a mega long day for us, to say I am cream crackered would be an under statement and I got Paul working too today, he had to get off the boat at every lock to shut one of the gates behind him. Team work for once. Stopped for diesel at Swallow Cruisers 63p a litre declared 30/70 this time split is going up now we are cruising more.

The mooring here is only 48 hours but we hope we can stretch it for a bit longer, Grand Prix this weekend. There is a line of permit holders opposite us and Paul was given some advice re the run up to Birmingham in as much as once we have gone through the next junction don't stop until we get in to the centre. So that will be another long day but no locks thank heaven.

Had a phone call from our friends Pete and Carol on nb Halcyon Days they are heading for the Llangollen via Rugley so will be approaching it from the opposite direction to us, hopefully we will meet up with them somewhere in the middle haven't seen them since last September.

Had a surprise email today from the people who sold us our old digi box (the one that we threw away) to say that they had had reports that the Thomson box was faulty and all prerecordings would be lost,(tell us about it) there then followed a long list of instructions to reboot the box. We sent them a very nice email back telling them what they could do with their box if they could find it in the land fill site it is now in.

What does Crystal's face tell you:

MUM I WANT OFF THIS BOAT NOW.