Still at Merry Hill

Here I am Rune

Distance 0 miles

Total 818 Locks 40 Tunnels

Running total mileage 1244.8miles

As planned, another non-moving day today although I think I need to go and lie down in a dark room to recover from the spending spree at the nearby Merry Hill Shopping Mall. Several weeks ago when we first arrived in Birmingham (I think it was as we were ascending the Wolverhampton Flight)  the washing machine threw a ‘wobbly’ and overheated filling the front of the boat with a strong burning smell. It has never really recovered but we have struggled on with it, mainly just using it for spinning. Yesterday I decided that it was about time we resolved the issue and, since we can see a local Argos shop from our cabin window, we went in there to order a replacement. Delivery will be interesting since it doesn’t seem as they will deliver to boats (they will only deliver to a terrestrial address with a post code). They have agreed to deliver it to the shop that we can see but I will then need to transport the washing machine up to the boat, it is only a distance of about 300 yards but it is uphill and the machine does way 45kg! The cost of this little extravaganza is the cause of the shock since most washing machine fall into the price band of a couple of hundred quid, this little baby comes in at about £495! It is however the only machine that will fit into the space on the boat where the washing machine goes so, unless I want to go in for a major re-design of the boat interior, that is what we have to pay.

To try to recover from the shock we decided to celebrate the crew’s birthday and went out for a very pleasant meal at a local pub, ‘Brewers Wharf’. Good value for money and very acceptable food.

Tomorrow the plan is to move on through the Delph flight of locks heading towards Stourbridge