Hatton

Here I am Rune

Distance 2.4 miles

Total 2336 Locks  102 Tunnels

Running total mileage 3349.8 miles 

Today’s trip, although not a lot in mileage, was a great chunk of locks,  21 to be precise, so it was quite a good work-out. As we have done on several of our previous trips through the Hatton Flight, we managed to team up with another boat which always speeds things on their way (relatively speaking). In a strange way I do like the Hatton flight since the design of the sluices that let the water into the locks actually does what is intended. If you moor the boat by it’s centre line in the middle of the lock and open the sluices on the side to which the boat is moored, the circulatory motion of the water in the lock holds the boat in position, unlike some locks which just blast the boat across the lock.

The trip up the flight took about 3 hours and 20 minutes but since we had got off to an early start (for us) of about 9.40am we were at the top comfortably in time to be able to watch Scotland thrash Wales in the 6 Nations.

I plan for a fairly short day tomorrow to take us up to Kingswood Junction for the night ready for the next flight of locks (Lapworth) on Monday morning. Once we get to the top of Lapworth there are no more locks (other than a permanently open stop-lock) until we get to Birmingham.