Harecastle for the third time in four weeks

Peter and Jan duly arrived, bearing lots of yummy stuff like beer, bread, more beer, biscuits and, er, wine.

We had a very good evening last night…

/blur

Not that we drank too much, of course, but it was good to have a relaxed evening with them.

Sheila got up at half six this morning, so that we were under way by seven. The weather wasn't quite as bad as forecast, and certainly not as bad as yesterday, but still very cold in a sharp northerly wind. We made it to Harecastle by ten, and had about a twenty minute wait. These days I'm never sure what to say when the tunnel keeper asks if we've been through before – you don't want to sound like you're showing off, but you do want to indicate tactfully that you've had plenty of experience in there.

And boy, have we had some experiences in there (sorry, you'll have to wait for Sheila's next book).

/nobigdeal

I mean, saying "I was going through this tunnel before ever you heard of British Waterways, Sunny Jim" is probably not the way to keep the keeper happy...

This time, however, we could justifiably say that this was our third time through in a month, which did the trick.

We were third in a convoy of four, and had a reasonably fast transit. The summit pound of the T&M is quite high at the moment, which made it easier to get over the silt bar at the north portal, but we still had plenty of clearance.

We made it to Etruria just before midday, to find a few boats already tied on the visitor moorings. The weather has been very off and on this afternoon, both showers and sunshine, so we seem to be back on track with typical April conditions.

I stayed on anchor watch whilst the rest of the crew investigated the Royal Doulton factory shop, and Peter carried on to find a garage to sell him a couple of papers (he's a Times reader). We've been relaxing/dozing for the rest of the afternoon.

Tomorrow, another early start; we want to get down to Stone for Peter and Jan to catch a train back to Congleton, so there's ten locks to get through.