No Room at Hopwas.

2 Locks, 9.09 Miles. Now moored near Whittington.

While enjoying breakfast we watched the crew on an original BW working barge named Dove moored opposite. The boat had an original engine that had to be cranked over, no electric start. Well the engine was not going to start easily, first a few puffs of smoke, then the odd Pop Pop as it started to fire but fizzled out. Eventually after a good half an hour swinging on the crank handle the brute finally decided to cooperate and fire up. The poor guy on the crank handle looked quite shattered at the end of it all.

More empty BW moorings at Peels Wharf. I don't think their tender system is working in their favour.

We struck lucky at Glascote locks with the top lock being in our favour and a boat coming up through the bottom lock so we were through in no time at all. At Sutton bridge we met another acquaintance, Dave on Nb Anon. He said that he knew we would be passing through and was hoping to catch up with us. Good to see you Dave and we wish you well. We had planned to stop at Hopwas for lunch and make a decision on further travel afterwards but there were no moorings available so it was lunch on the run.

Want a canal side residence?  The Laurels a new canal side redevelopment near Fazeley Junction.

We carried on for about an hour when the wind started to get quite blustery and cold so we decided we had done enough for the day and moored up. By about 4pm it was starting to get really cold so I fired up the Alde central heating. It went for a short while and then went out. I  re-lit it a couple of times but with the same end result. A short time later Dot lit the oven for tea and complained it wasn’t running properly. A quick trip into the gas locker to change bottles and we were back in business. Hopefully this was all that was wrong with the Alde but I will wait until tomorrow to find out, the boat it quite warm enough now with the oven going.

Canadian Cedar?

A total of 67.01 Miles, and 38 Locks on Granny Buttons.