Shirley

 

Here I am Rune

Distance 6.2 miles 

Total 5346 Locks  445 Tunnels

Running total mileage 8092.7 miles

 

A very pleasant Autumnal cruise along the North Stratford Canal today. Originally the weather forecast for today didn’t look too optimistic, but the rain came early in the morning and the rest of the day has been generally fine and sunny. For such a good day for cruising, there weren’t many boats on the move, only two and one of them was only moving ‘cos we were towing it! A couple of heritage boats passed us on our mooring last night and we caught up with one of them poling past a moored boat just as you leave Hockley Heath obviously with a bit of a problem. Spoke to them and it appears there was both a problem with the engine and something around the prop. The second heritage boat seemingly hadn’t realised there was a problem and had gone on ahead so was about a mile further up the canal and they were trying to bow haul the second boat up to it. Seemed only reasonable to offer them a tow (might need someone to give me a tow someday) so hitched it up and towed it up the canal to the second heritage boat. They are supposedly going to the Black Country Museum for a meeting of heritage boats so I hope that they can either get the engine and prop fixed, or the second boat can tow him to it. My ‘good deed’ for the day done anyway!

We didn’t get quite back to where we moored on Monday night, found another mooring just short of that where there was armco. Tomorrow, all things going to plan, we hope to be back in Birmingham.

 

Quick update;- the boat we towed has just come past us at 4.55pm still heading towards Brum. It was called 'Buckden' and is currently running on one cylinder!!