Sadly the alarm clock was reliable as ever and did its thing at 6am this morning. We did get an earlyish night for us but my aching joints ( fibromyalgia) saw to it I had not the best seven hours sleep so I was dozing when the alarm kicked off.
I do like early mornings and cruising early ( just don’t like getting up early) and nature welcomed me into another day of my life with a little show of beauty.
Engine lubed up and the day tank pump re primed (every now and again it gets air into it stopping it pumping) we were off at 7.20am with a destination of bridge 85 close to Hack Green locks.
We pootled through a sleepy Market Drayton seeing NB Jubilee in her new mooring - looking good John and Jan.
We were soon caught up by a hire boat with six lads who I let past. I thought they might be efficient but I think too many pints had been sunk the night before as at the top of the Adderley flight one of them tied the centre line so tight to the bollard his mate used his Swiss Army knife to just cut the rope ! The steerer then spend a good few minuted revving the engine out of gear and wondering why there was no forward motion. I’m not too sure he was happy to be educated by a crusty old man ( me) on how to gain forward momentum !
We made good progress down the Adderley flight (lovely locks and location) but the Audlem flight was stop start and I think we had to turn about 10 of the 15 locks. At the last but one lock it started to rain and we were hungry as the clock was hitting 1.30pm So I moored up a bit short of Hack green just past Overwater marina.
The afternoon job is to free a stuck (full cassette) before either of us needs the loo !
Tomorrow we hopefully will get onto a canal not cruised since we stuck Waterlily’s nose up to Swanley before staying put and letting the other boats do the cruising.
We may get fuel also, Percy has big diesel tanks so it might be as well to to use some of that up before we fill up....I’ll play it by ear.
Lovely Adderley wharf
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