It’s a drizzly start to the day so we take the rubbish to the bins and jump in the car as there is a Halfords nearby and Chris needs a bell for his bike which is now fully loaded, although he wants to get a trolley thing for it which I think we should wait and see if we need as it’s just another item to store when storage is at a premium on a boat. Come lunchtime and the day starts to clear and so we decide to spin the boat around as we need to be facing Trent Lock to go up the Erewash when I get back from my holiday to have the blacking done and i get back on the Tuesday and it has to be at the end of the Erewash by Thursday morning so it’s cutting it all a bit fine! It’s less than ten minute cruise to Cranfleet Lock and result!!!!!!!!! ((remember the rule Peachy. Use exclamation points sparingly!!)) The lockies are at the lock gates. To all you lockies, we salute you. I love doing the locks but on days like today when you have a certain mission in mind, it’s nice to have some help. ((For those that don’t know. The canals are only a certain width and depending on the size of you boat you have to find what they call a ‘winding hole’ to turn the boat around.)) thanks Brackets, yeah that’s right. We can turn the boat near where the water point is but then it would be so tricky to reverse the boat, as I’ve mentioned before we don’t have steering in reverse as we don’t have a bow thruster or anything to aid the direction other than the tiller and we don’t want to be bouncing into other people’s boats!
We cruise out of the lock and Chris spins the boat perfectly and I’d wished I’d filmed it but the river is fierce here and I wanted to concentrate and be on hand to help, not that I know what I would have done ((Probably put a life jacket on your coffee machine Peachy – that would be my guess)) It’s back in the lock and I managed to get some great videos of these which should be on the next vlog. We moor up more or less where we were so we are now facing the right way.Chris needs a part for the water header tank as it’s been leaking. Which seems quite a common thing, so we headed off to Mercia Marina and Midland Chandlers for a new pressure cap, which they not only had in stock but was about £30 cheaper than the other they had! Result, maybe my lotto numbers are going to come up as well! So since we had saved money we used a voucher for the pub and treated ourselves to a Sunday dinner! ((Such a hard life Peachy.))
Day done. Until tomorrow… x
C.L. Peache 