An extra bit of boating

After all this loafing around, we realised that, if we were going to be in Alrewas for tomorrow (Thursday) lunchtime as planned, we'd need to do some serious boating today. This was because Woodend Lock is stopped tomorrow morning, just for the morning, to clear the blocked ground paddle that's been slowing everything up.

The prospect of a longer trip was not, of itself, unwelcome. Thanks to the strong sun on Sunday and our large solar panel, we'd actually not needed to run the engine at all for the three days we were tied at Tixall, so giving the battery bank a good charging was a good idea.

Sheila did her boating before breakfast bit, and I took over as we were wending our way through Rugeley. In fact, we got to the shopping mooring a bit early, but that just gave us time to have a cup of coffee and to check the email before Morrisons opened at eight. We had a quick canter round, stocking up on all the essentials that were running low, then Sheila steered again whilst I put stuff away.

Then I went on the bow with the radio to do lookout through the narrow and windy bits through Armitage and Handsacre. The radios once again performed well. We'd realised the need for new ones when the old ones wouldn't reach from one end of Armitage Tunnel to the other, but no problem with these.

The weather slowly improved – I had got a good wetting steering through Rugeley – and by the time we reached Woodend it was positively sunny. We'd expected to find a queue above the lock, but it was deserted. Several boats arrived as we were locking down, and there's been steady traffic for the rest of the day.

Approaching Shade House, we were prepared to stop at the top if there was room, but otherwise to lock down and hope to tie outside the BW yard. Once again the radios showed their worth. There were two possible spaces, so I stood on the bow and gave a call when it was just coming up to the stern of the boat in front. For the first space, this showed that there wasn't room, but for the second, the stern had just cleared the boat behind when I called.

Sheila then gave a virtuoso demo of reversing into a space just long enough; I reckon we've got a foot spare at either end. We'd not long had lunch when Keith and Susie on Etherow and Pilgrim came past (they have a 30 foot boat each). We didn't speak to them then as they were having a "discussion" about where to moor, but later on Susie came back up the flight and we had a long natter.

More work has been done on the newsletter, and later on we took a walk down the flight to see how things were on the visitor moorings. Surprisingly, there were still several spaces at half four, though I suspect they will have filled up by now.