A shopfest at Sutton Road Bridge

It is nice when a plan comes together, as it did today. We set off at eight and after the expected hour's boating (well, OK, 1 hr 10 min) we were tied up at Sutton Road Bridge, access point for the Jolly Sailor and Ventura retail parks.

There was only one other boat here when we arrived, but we've been joined by several others since, including Mick and Gill on Dawntreader, who tell us that this is also the best place to moor for getting to Tamworth railway station, which in turn has connections to most of the rest of the country.

As a mooring, it's become even more safe than it was already, with the development of the final bit of scrubland alongside the canal; apparently, it's going to be yet more warehouse and retail units. With the existing Audi showroom and second hand car lot, which has 24 hour CCTV, it feels really very safe. The only loss is the footpath down the side of the scrubland, which made a more pleasant access to Sainsbury's than walking down the road, but you can't have everything.

We've made three trips altogether, one just to start restocking the larder, one that included a trip to Argos and TK-Maxx, and one that penetrated the depths of the Ventura Park to get to M&S and Boots, as well as Halfords and Homebase.

I won't bore you with a list of everything that we got, tempting though that is (after all, I'm paying myself by the line ;) ), but one item may be of interest.

For some time, we've been pondering the problem of having the steerer at one end of the boat and the crew at an unknown location within the boat or on the bow. So far, the solution has been to bellow down the boat when assistance was required, but this isn't always effective, and with advancing age-related hearing loss, becoming less so.

I'd wondered about some sort of bell, perhaps the kind of door bell where the main bit plugs into any power socket, and the bell push connects wirelessly to it. So we went into Argos where I found a battery powered job for just £5.99. It works the length of the boat, so hopefully is just what we wanted.

The other neat piece of boating kit to mention isn't ours, but belongs to Dawntreader; they have a cat on board, which has on a couple of occasions fallen in. It swims OK, but of course the problem is, how does it get out? So they have a pair of car wheels and tyres, one of which is tied to the mooring chains at each end of the boat, and provides an accessible platform for the moggy to haul itself out on in such an emergency.

Tomorrow, we'll have a run up to Kingsbury Water Park for a couple of days, before heading back to Alrewas in very easy stages.