Thursday 15th

Yesterday evening there was a generator chugging along for a long, long time. Now, the rule with narrowboats is that you don't run engines or generators between 8pm and 8am, so we weren't too worried, surely, come 8pm, silence will reign. But no, it went on all night.

In the morning we found out why.

A pipe pumping water from the field behind the hedge opposite. My guess is that they are expanding the marina and need to keep the site dry while the work goes ahead.

We moved up to the bottom lock and waited there in the hopes that a locking buddy would come along. And, like a No.7 bus, three came along together. The first was a fibreglass boat whose owner didn't want to share the locks with a steel narrowboat. However, he was happy enough for the boat behind to come through with us.

This was a family who had hired the same boat last year and knew what they were doing. We fairly flew along the flight. That is after we had got through the very first lock. Because of a very short pound between the first two locks, every time water was let down from the lock above, it overflowed the top gates of the bottom lock making it impossible to open the bottom gates. Water was flowing into the lock faster than it could be let out at the bottom. Boats trying to get out of the lock to let us go in were struck there until the water had subsided. Still, we got there in the end.

The captain got fed up with me and decided to walk.

She wasn't too unhappy as we'd bought her new gloves for working the locks.

We moored for the night just past Norton Junction and, once again, a red sky at night.

You can't beat it, can you.