Meeting up with Free Spirits

We got away at half eight this morning, after a bit of a mixed night in the heat. I walked Sally to the lock whilst Sheila boated, then I took over steering whilst She worked the lock. After that, it was a very pleasant session, chugging along what is strictly speaking one of the less attractive bits of the Staffs and Worcs, though on a day like today, it is hard to imagine what could be better.

Checking previous blog posts, I see that it's a bit under a year since we came this way, when we had a rendezvous with Graeme, Cathy and the boys at Stafford Boat Club. This time, we've stopped above Deptmore Lock, having taken just under three hours to get here from Tixall.

We had planned to carry on to Penkridge tomorrow, but this is such a good place for exercising Sally, I think we'll stay here another night, and move to Penkridge on Sunday morning. It means doing without the Saturday Independent, but I can cope, honestly I can.

/floor

It'll just be full of Olympic stuff anyway…

/sweat

As we'd hoped, Ian and Irene turned up on Free Spirit not long after lunch, so we've had a jolly afternoon nattering and drinking tea. It is as usual very good to fill out your knowledge of fellow bloggers, and to swap the goss about all the others…

/wahaha.

After we'd finished, I popped down the weed hatch to check we hadn't picked anything up in our trip round the outskirts of Stafford, and to make sure that the prop was still soundly attached; it is, of course, but it makes sense to cross check these things when you've had work done.

Sally has been taking it in turns to supervise us, leading Sheila to start quoting Robert Louis Stevenson:

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,

And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.

He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;

And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed. 

It's from A Child's Garden of Verses, and the full text is here.