The consequence of an early night meant we were both awake and enjoying our morning drink in bed. I like this time as I catch up on what’s happening in the world and do a few social posts to advertise my books or Youtube channel. Incidentally if anyone is reading this who has read one of my books and haven’t left a review then it would be very much appreciated. ((Unless you didn’t like it of course then don’t worry about it!))

I have lock lust ((just stop Peachy. We honestly don’t want to know. I’m going to short circuit with the images in my head!)) as the Gallows Inn Lock gates have been replaced – not sure when but they are the newest looking lock gates I’ve seen. Beautiful crafts’person’ship 😉 and the mechanism on the lower locks are just wonderful to use. The ground paddles are too hard for me to do and the gate paddles a bit stiff but I manage. Slowly does it.

The next lock Larklands comes around pretty quickly and there seems to be more rubbish in the canals along this stretch. We already have a bag as a tail on the stern ((You always have a bag on!)) but it’s not around the prop so hopefully we won’t need to go into the weed hatch again. There is another boat coming through which is only the second boat we have passed whilst cruising so the lock gates are open which saves us a bit of time.

The next lock looms soon and we are tackling Potters Lock ((No relation to the famous wizard I don’t think))  a really nice chap stops to help with gates and a good old chinwag with chris whilst I set the lock. It’s great talking to folk on the canals. One chap tells me that his parents used to run barge & butties along the canal and he said things haven’t changed in a hundred years as the women still do all the work! Ha!

On that I’ve been trying to take over doing the cruising a bit more just to get my experience. I feel pretty confident really with the boat but it just falls naturally that chris likes cruising and I like doing the locks but I want to make sure that I can do the whole lot should I need to, so I need to prize the tiller off chris more to get some practice.

Right, I’ve managed to sit down and write some of this in real time as it’s a bit drizzly out after doing the last lock  ((more like you wanted a coffee!)) the boat has been grounding out a little as the canal is so shallow and chris keeps popping the boat in reverse as this clears the prop shaft a bit ((I think this blog is getting a bit sordid)) to get rid of the weed and rubbish. Time to get up now though as we are nearly at the next lock.

I prefer to write a little bit on the blog as I go along otherwise I just forget everything. But since we haven’t been on this canal before and it was so beautiful yesterday, I thought I would treat myself to a full cruising day. Right, I’m off!

We are here! ((well that’s spoilt it hasn’t it!!??? Honestly after writing 13^th books don’t you know anything about setting the tension. If I were your publisher, I would dismiss you right there!)) It’s 17.23pm and we arrived at the boatyard about 3.30pm.

To continue from where we left off we made it to Barker’s Lock number 70 which I think where we started to hit a bit of trouble with locks as a lot of them have the vandal locks on which I will show in one of the vlogs. We didn’t think we had a vandal key so it was all a bit slow as we couldn’t open some of the ground paddles or gate paddles due to either the fact they were too heavy or locked.

It was really bad when we came to Stenson’s Lock as only one paddle would open. All of the other locks had the vandal locks on them. So after much faffing as the gates would just not open due to the amount of water coming into the locks because they leak. Chris found a tool to open one of the vandal locks and off we went. I eventually found ours on the boat. We haven’t had to use them until now. If you’re going to do the Erewash then you 100% need the vandal key otherwise it will be equally very slow or you just won’t be able to get in or out!

I make myself another coffee as we have a bit of a stretch until the next one. Again, there is some issues with weed and the water being shallow and we can hear the bottom of the boat grounding out so good job we are off to have the bottom blacked, although they don’t actually do the bottom just the sides really ((Again with the innuendoes!)) I don’t mean it but what other words do I use?? ((Undercarriage – no that’s not right – you’re corrupting my brain!!)) Shipley Lock is the next one along and the paddles are quite difficult but I manage to open them. There we plenty of people hanging about in cars and vans here. Not that they were any trouble. I made the mistake of not realising the paddle was open on one side.

((Watch out folks a shift in the time thingy continumumumumum…)) It’s Tuesday 29^th August and I’ve only just got chance to finish this blog post. You will see what we have been up to in the coming week but I’m shattered so bringing this one to a close as it’s 6.30pm and we have been non-stop today with one thing and another ((I cannot wait for you to share what happened Peachy!)) Well some people might already know if they follow me on social media!

I’m too tired to fill in the lock and facilities info so will add that in another day and also continue everything that happened when we arrived at the boatyard! Also too tired to find a picture so had to use an old one!

Until tomorrow when you will no doubt hear my moans from my aching body! x