Offchurch

Here I am Rune

Distance 6.3 miles

Total 972 Locks 56 Tunnels

Running total mileage 1358.1 miles

It’s amazing just how much easier it gets through these Grand Union broad locks when you can double up with another boat. Today we teamed up with a boat called BASCOTE at Stockton Top lock and between us we got though 17 locks before we separated at Fosse Wharf (we needed water and cassettes emptying). Their shoreman had brought his bike so was ‘lock-wheeling’ to the next lock to prepare it for us whilst we worked through the current lock and once we got into the rhythm we were ‘speeding’ through the locks (relatively!!). We are hoping that we will be able to double up with someone to go up the Hatton flight sometime over the weekend, since it is Easter weekend I would expect it to be quite busy and am fairly hopeful of finding a ‘pair’. Once we get to the top of Hatton we will be four locks short of our thousandth lock (at 10 minutes a lock that means we have spent nearly 7 complete days just doing locks since we moved onto the boat!)

Forecasters weren’t so accurate today since no rain was forecast but we got a few showers over us during the course of the day, the wind was however easily manageable and it would seem that quite a lot of boats stayed put yesterday because of the wind and now today are making up what they missed so the canal has been quite busy.