Nicely does it

First off, a warning for those cruising the Staffs and Worcs between Kidderminster and Stourport. There's a confidence trickster there who caught us nicely in 2008 (I think it was), and is still operating, seemingly. The Jameisons on Free Spirit have just been taken for a tenner by him, and give a very good account of his modus operandi.

Be warned: he's very convincing but no, you won't see your money again. This sort of crime really sickens me, as it trades on the one thing that makes us human above everything else, our kindness to others. If he approaches you, the choices are:

1. Detain him and call the cops
2. Beat him to a pulp and drop him in the cut
3. Just tell him to be on his way.

I guess most of us would go for (3), the right thing to do is (1) but I promise you, if you do give him money, next morning you'll wish you'd taken option (2).  :(

But enough of this gloom. After a  rather broken night – the wedding reception at the Italian restaurant was well behaved but a bit noisy (as are they all) – we made an early start and were soon on our way down the Curdworth flight. Lock 1 is really nice, and indeed all the locks have been well spruced up. There is a water point below the lock, but the only mooring rings are on the wrong side of the towpath, so we gave it a miss.

I was lockwheeling, and Sheila tells me the long pound between the top lock and number 2 was a bit low. When I got to Lock 2, there was an ex-Ownerships boat in Lock 3. Her lockwheeler told me that the pound between 2 and 3 was almost dry and he was running water down. After a while, he opened the top gate of 3, and the boat (which I won't identify for kindness sake) chugged out and got halfway into 2, where it stuck hard.

The first thought was that it was on the cill, so more water was run down. Then I realised that they were boating with their fenders down (baaad idea) and they were stuck between the gate and the wall. Reversing out and lifting the fenders soon cured the problem, and all was well.

Except that there was now so little water in the pound above, Sanity Again was well aground about two feet out from the lock landing, and of course filling the lock only made things worse. We eventually got the ex-OS boat past us, and some hard work with lines, shafts and skillful use of the engine finally got her back into the bridge hole above the lock, from where Sheila was able to take the main channel into the lock.

After that, things went well, there now being no lack of water coming down with us. We stopped on the water point below Lock 9, and then worked down the final two to find our favourite mooring by Kingsbury Water park available.

Here we've sat out a very hot afternoon. Sheila did a bit of bird watching, I made three basic lanyards for the PMR radios, two of which Elanor will hopefully deliver tomorrow, and we've just generally relaxed. I was going to say chilled out, but that's not the bon mot for today's conditions.