Drizzly yet busy through Fradley

Despite what certain hounds have blogged, yesterday was a well worthwhile exercise; Elanor’s garden looks a load better for it. I’m all in favour of having wild areas (we did ourselves in our next to last house, which had a largish lump of Anglesey attached), but not in a pocket handkerchief job like Elanor’s.

We weren't even all that stiff this morning, though we did oversleep, not waking until seven. After a hasty start, we moved onto the water point at half past. I nipped into the village for bread and a paper and we were on our way again just after eight, boating in a thin drizzle.

Most of the locks were against us, so it was a slowish run to Fradley; after a while we could see another boat just ahead, though we never caught up enough to identify it. Fradley was pretty busy, though not a patch on how it used to be on a Friday in the days when there were both OwnerShips and Swan Line fleets turning round.

We started to meet boats coming the other way by the time we got to Shade House, and Woodend was frankly a bit chaotic, with several boats waiting to come down and an exOwnerShips crowding in from below. He made the mistake of bringing his bow up into the bridge hole below the bottom gates and had to reverse out, of course, as there was a boat descending.

I was glad it was Sheila’s turn to steer; she’s much more phlegmatic than I, though even she became a bit acerbic about the guy who let go his bow line just as she was managing to squeeze Sanity Again between him and a boat coming the other way. The bow swung out, of course, and hit us a resounding bang.

Heigh ho, no damage was done and no one hurt – after the event you can laugh at these things…

/floor

We’ve been able to moor just beyond Kings Bromley marina as usual; it’s just a bit gloomy here as the trees are in full leaf and shading out what little sunlight is struggling through the cloud cover. We’ve had a quiet afternoon; tomorrow, on through Rugeley to the pig farm mooring probably.