Day 3: April 20th.
It had rained during the night, and was still drizzling so we had a wet start.
We left early at 7.32 as we had six locks today, Harvington being the first which was only half a mile away and the gates so heavy it took the two of us to shift them. It is also the first of several with limited headroom so we had to take our canopy down.
We were through by 8.15 having spoken to an American gentleman who had just had his pancakes for breakfast. He and another boat were both going to Stratford today in tandem.
Marlcliff was next, and we were through that by 9.20 with no trouble as the gates were in our favour.
At Barton we did a silly, something we have never done but is a common mistake, and on exiting we forgot to untie our back rope. Oops. We were on our way by 10.10.
Bideford Lock was also straightforward and we were out by 10.43 heading for Welford which we cleared by 11.28.
I took the boat through Binton Bridges at 11.50, and we arrived at Luddington by 12.50.
Always my nemesis, I had trouble getting the rope again as the lock is so deep, and we had a popper casualty which pulled through the cratch cover fabric with the strain of the boat as the rope was through the bow rather than round it.
Hubby washed the boat again, and it rained about an hour later. It was becoming the standing joke again as whenever he washed the car/boat/windows, it would always rain shortly afterwards!
We filled up with our reserve diesel and she seems to have drunk 10-15 litres so far which is well within our calculations.
It was nice to relax, and I even got to start one of the books I’d brought along for the trip.
At Pershore, I’d also purchased a mini Suduko book to tease the mind and Hubby and I took it in turns to complete a puzzle. We both found some of the easy ones the hardest, and I tried to flex my grey muscle matter with attempting the medium and hard categories………………. and failed in a lot of cases!
As an aside to this entry, we washed our hair tonight, which can only be described as The Long and the Short of it!
Hubby’s took less than five minutes to dry, mine took five minutes to wash, ten minutes to rinse and god knows how many hours to dry!
The picture on the left was taken in October, the one on the right on Dec 31st.
pensitivity101 
Good to see you back again 🙂
The final photos show a whole new and improved You. 🙂 Well Done. 🙂
Thanks.
Many years ago I did a couple of ads for Butchers Dog food where we played the butchers and in one I had to steer a narrow boat, not as easy as it looks as you tend to over compensate and end up veering from side to side. As it was just a very quick shot I didn’t have the time to get the hang of it and as it was some time ago in the 80’s I think, I can’t even remember if the boat scene was in the final ad.
I never mastered getting back into our berth on the marina, but I managed Ok in and out of locks (eventually) and ‘parking’ for the night. We had a bow thruster which helped get us back on line.
The bow thruster must be helpful when parking
Oh yeah, especially when the wind is against you as you try to bring her in and your partner is trying to secure a line and all fingers and thumbs (Hubby at the helm, me on the shore making a mess of my knots as usual when I panic)