Heading back and a disappointment

We had a quiet night on the mooring at Stourbridge. It's right by a park and near a school but the hard surfaced towpath is well used by the locals for walking, dog walking and cycling and there was no feeling of exposure. By evening, another three boats had arrived and tied up.

We got away on good time this morning, Sheila steering and myself doing look out. It was a good run back to Wordsley Junction where Sheila made much better job of the turn into the bridge hole. As she commented, the turn the other way, into the bottom lock of the Stourbridge flight, would be much trickier.

Sadly, it wasn't anything like as fine weather today, indeed, it was a case of fleece and gloves for both steerer and lockwheeler. On we plodded back to the top of the Stourton locks. Three of these were empty and the third one down was full, just as they were yesterday. Another boater we spoke to then said they had been like that the day before too, so there's obviously something about the way the gates leak that does that.

We turned right and headed back up the Staffs and Worcs. We're going to vary our stopping places going back, just to make a bit of variety, so today we've stopped short of Gothersley lock on the moorings by the remains of the old roundhouse. A pleasant surprise was that there are reasonable phone signals here, a change from the usual situation at a middle-of-nowhere mooring.

Unfortunately, one of the emails which arrived told us that our planned boating partners for the trip into Liverpool in June have had a domestic disaster and will not after all be able to join us. No one killed or injured or anything like that, but they will need to concentrate on sorting stuff out at home during the summer. It's a great pity, we were really looking forward to their company.

Ho hum, that's the way it goes, I guess, but it's a real shame.

Tomorrow, we'll head on up the locks through Greensforge to Swindon. We had thought of eating in the nice pub there tomorrow night, but maybe not on a Saturday...