7 miles, 11 locks

Doesn't seem much, does it? Only 7 miles and 11 locks in one day but in narrowboat terms that adds up to 4 1/2 hours travelling time. As a guess, the boat travels at 4mph and a lock takes 15 mins - you should be able to work out the maths yourself.

First lock and the captain is working well. 

Second lock, must be time for a tea break. To be fair, there are 3 boats ahead of us and we are waiting for a boat to come up through the lock before we can go down. 

It also slows things up when one of the paddles is out of commission. 

Good old work building by one of the locks. 

Most of the Cudworth locks have flowers and it gives the impression that they are being looked after. In the old days there would have been a resident lock keeper who would have taken great pride in the locks under his care. 

Oh dear! Looks like I nudged the lock gates too hard. We have a points system - 1 for an open drawer, 2 for cupboard doors flying open, etc., but I don't think that we've had toppling fire extinguishers before. Will have to put them on the list. 

We always slow down past anglers. Some are cheerful and others just plain grumpy. These ones were OK. 

And here we are at the last lock for today which also has a (disused) swing bridge.

And talking about bridges, how about this one? It's described as a marvellous folly. You almost want to cross it just for the fun of it. Just about 50yds the other side of the bridge we stopped and have now moored up. We could have pushed on a bit further but we are coming up to Fazeley and didn't want to stop too near the town. We prefer being in the countryside.