Granny falls at the final hurdle.

2 Locks. 7.22 Miles. Now moored at Willington.

What started out to be a fairly straight forward day finished up to be anything but. Even though the weather was fine when we started from we could see clouds amassing on the horizon with a full blown rainbow. We headed off in the hope that we would out run the rain but it wasn’t to be. By the time we reached bridge 24A the rain was getting quite heavy.

Burton upon Trent home of Marstons Brewery.

However we took the opportunity to stop here and renew our acquaintance with Geoff and Mags on Nb Seyella. As we had time to spare and the weather wasn’t improving Geoff kindly offered us lunch we gratefully accepted. Thank you both for the wonderful company, sorry we will miss you on Thursday, I will be too busy reading with all the extra reading material from you.

Geoff and Nb Seyella.

By about 2pm the weather was showing signs of improvement so we took our leave and set off on the final leg of the journey to Mercia Marina. We  hadn’t gone far when I noticed smoke coming from the engine room vent. Dot was hastily summoned from sheltering below deck and a rapid mooring then took place enabling me to turn off the engine. It transpired that a rubber water connection had split and was spewing out steam, this mixed with hot oil vapour made it look like we were on fire. Thank goodness we weren’t.

This was the old A38 over the river Dove before the new road bridge was built just beyond it.

A phone call to Andrew and then RCR got a rescue plan underway. At around 6.30pm the RCR engineer arrived to get Granny operational once more. Due to the late hour we will leave our arrival at Mercia Marina until tomorrow, and our landlord will pick us up at 4pm to take us home to March.

A total of 88.32 Miles, and 49 Locks on Granny Buttons.