Something for the weekend, Sir, part two

I was working in Brum today, delivering a course to a group at an engineering company on the side of the ‘old thirteen’ just above lock twelve, needless to say when we stopped for lunch, I took a stroll up the canal for half an hour, sadly no boats on the move, but was still pleasant.  Anyway back to the blog,  the course had been organised to run from 9.30am to 4.30pm which would have meant that by the time I had finished and packed everything away it would have been near enough 5.00pm.  Now anybody who knows central Brum will know that by this time the traffic is solid and a crawl all up the motorway back to Cannock, and I wanted to be moving Darley.  So earlier in the week I spoke to the works manager and convinced him that the course would be far better starting when their shit starts which was 7.30 am.  This saw me finished, loaded up and leaving by 3.30pm, home by 4.30pm and, after waiting for Dawn to do us some pork cobs for our tea, we were down to Darley just turned five o’clock. We left Crown bridge by 5.30 and were on our way.  Despite a boat moored above Shade house lock pulling out right in front of us as we approached then taking forever working down the flight, we were still making the turn by 6.45pm. When once you have made the turn at Fradley you are on a really pretty but shitty stretch of cut.  The Coventry canal is badly in need of a good clean out and Darley dragged her arse along all the way to Huddlesford chucking up great bellows of rotted leaves, sticks and other vegetable matter.  We finally tied up under the railway bridge at Huddlesford at 8.30pm averaging 3mph overall.

Tomorrow evening, as soon as I finish work, I am off down to Darley for the last leg of this trip.  Because of cars and the need for Dawn to go to work on Saturday, she is not coming with me so a bit of single handing tomorrow and a night by myself on the boat, boo hoo (mind you I will be tied up at the Samuel Barlow pub at Alvecote Marina)  So I am really looking forward the tomorrow and the weekend.  I will let you know how it all goes when I return so till then, as always,

Don’t bang ‘em about

Blossom.