Some days are diamond...

25th & 26th July

I don't know if it is old age or what, but this business of waking early is getting out of hand. Yesterday was another day when, since we didn't need to leave to walk into town until nine, we could have had a nice lie in. Instead of which we were up and about early and found ourselves pottering about filling in the time.

Actually, as so often, this is unfair to Sheila, who was industriously crocheting, but you know what I mean.

We normally try to avoid Saturday appointments for things like the opticians since a) things are always busier on Saturday and b) it seems unfair to take up an appointment outside the working week which could be used by someone with less choice in the matter than ourselves. In this case however SpecSavers had given us little option in the matter.

At least the experience confirmed the wisdom of our normal strategy. The place was heaving and the whole thing took much longer than normal because the various peripheral machines were in heavy use. However, it was finally over and we were free to retreat to the boat.

When we got back to the marina, we found Shiraz in the service dock and Sheila went for a natter with them whilst I enquired for the drive belt we had on order. This hadn't yet arrived, so they are going to keep it for us until we return in a couple of weeks' time.

I'd had the dreaded pupil expanding drops in my eyes, so Sheila did the boating while I waited for my vision to return to normal. Typically, it was a brilliantly sunny day and I had to go about looking like some sinister character in The Sopranos or The Wire, wearing large lensed prescription sun glasses under a long peaked baseball cap.

We got to the Morrison's mooring a bit after eleven. By the time we'd had a cup of coffee it was half past and lunch time was appearing over the horizon. With a bit of shopping to do it seemed best to do some more pottering / crocheting and then to shop after lunch.

The cut was now very busy indeed, and it seemed very possible that there would be little or no mooring space near the water park. Accordingly, we stopped on the towpath below Branston lock, which proved a wise decision. After a pause to allow my eyes to become nearly as normal as they ever are, we set off to visit five geocaches variously located between the railway and the river on the far side of Branston village.

I'm pleased to say we found all of them including the two micros, in the course of about six miles walking. It was a great way to use the first decent day we've had for some time, and today's weather has only confirmed how right we were to do so.

I'd planned an easy meal, consisting of Quorn escalopes, new potatoes and broccoli so that at least we were able to collapse for a time when we finally got back to the boat.

Before showering and cooking this meal, I sat on a stool on the towpath draped in a blue polythene cycle cape, whilst Sheila reduced the length of my hair with the aid of the clippers. I'm sometimes tempted to whistle "Delilah" whilst this is going on, thus combining subtle Biblical references with Sheila's fondness for Tom Jones hits, but it seems inadvisable when she's trimming my eyebrows with a sharp pair of scissors.

We were up and about early again this morning (gosh doesn't Radio 4 have some odd stuff on at 6am?), this time with justification as we wanted to boat through to Alrewas to arrive there between ten and eleven, and we estimated this would take something over three hours including a water stop at Barton Turn.

We got away just after seven, and were not the first boat up the lock even so. In fact the traffic was such as you'd normally expect in the middle of the day at a weekend rather than first thing in the morning.

Our timings were about right, allowing for a bit of extra delay at the locks, and it was twenty to eleven when we tied on the visitor moorings by the water point, where there was indeed plenty of room. They have since filled up as we expected.

The only real incident of note involved a fisherman rather than a boater. Contrary to all the advice and instructions issued to anglers, he had chosen to fish from the bullnose below Alrewas lock, using two rods to cast into the river. As I've said, there was a lot of boat traffic and so I had to wait on the nice new moorings below the lock whilst Sheila assisted the boat ahead to lock up. In turn this meant I had to boat across his swim when the lock was ready.

He left it to the last moment to reel in, one of his lines tangled and jammed, and his float disappeared under Sanity's stem as I powered into the lock, resisting the potent cross current from the millstream which makes this lock approach so interesting even without the presence of idiots.

There was nothing either of us could do and he had to cut his line to save his rod. Once Sanity was rising in the lock I got the boathook and fished about under the stem to see if the line was still there, but it had gone, presumably swept away down stream as soon as it was free.

The rest of the day has been very quiet, raining on and off and with sundry boats travelling past being handled with greater or lesser degrees of skill.

Tomorrow we'll head on up through Fradley (another very early start, methinks) and plan to tie near Kings Bromley marina for the night.