Author: sven

On the Seventh day there will be no rest. We’re at Wheelock heading South and there are locks – lots of them.

More later; including pub reviews and logs.

After a setback at the Trent on Sunday we needed to make good time. With plenty of daylight we managed 11 hours cruising, and began our Four Counties tour mid afternoon.

Lunch was from the Ash Tree pub near Rugeley; great food with 2-for-1 deals.

Today should see us join the Shropshire Union just after lunch.

Thankfully the Trent crossing reopened last night at about 9.30 so with the last ounces of daylight we went for it. Calls of ‘good luck’ from the remaining moored boats were very nice but slightly off-putting; what were we letting ourselves in for?

As we drove past the weir we kept well right. The pull was still strong and it was tough to keep steady but we made it past – a definite adrenalin rush. As we passed the inflow of water upstream it was easier (wider inflow so not as great a flow) but we certainly felt the boat shift as we turned (it’s on a bend).

The engine was lovely (upwards of 3000rpm to keep a steady forward pace) and the boat and its contents are intact 🙂

Because of the downstream queue we had to go through two locks before finding a large enough mooring, but found a quiet spot as night came down on us.

This morning we left about 7.15 for an early start but quickly got caught up in queues on the locks. We’ve just hit a 7 or 8 mile flat bit so making good time, and hope to be on the Four Counties ring by early evening.

Success. The Trent and Merseyside has reopened where the Trent crosses. We looked at the weir earlier and it was pretty horrible, but people are coming downstream so it all looks good! Hopefully we’ll get a short way past the weir before we quit for the night.

Thank goodness: it’s shallow water, we’re right next to a dual carriageway and the air smells of pig.

Apparently the River Trent where it crosses the Trent and Mersey canal is closed, so we’re at the Barton marina getting ready to queue up. Can’t seem to find anything about this on the British Waterways website from my mobiel though and being a Sunday all the numbers are unanswered.

We had a short cruise yesterday, with a late start. Managed to cover about nine miles and moored up at the Bubble Inn pub by Stenson Lock #6. Some really horrible weather at times with thunder and hail, but today looks more promising. The boat (The Deblin) is lovely, and very comfortable.

Started off at nine today, and hoping to get a full day’s cruise in.

And we’re off… set off about 2.30pm from Shardlow towards the four counties. Three locks so far; plenty of hire boats about and after a brief hailstorm the weather has cleared up. Hopefully if my phone works okay you should see the first of many pictures —

Can’t stop … in little over six hours we’re going on the canals again from Shardlow round the Four Counties ring – should be good fun, and I’m going to try a bit of photoblogging too!

This phone supports HSDPA or whatever it’s called. As far as I know that’s faster than 3G data connections. When I first got the phone from vodafone UK it auto-ran a utility that tried to disable HSDPA. Unfortunately (for them) it crashed, so it’s all still enabled on this phone.

The odd thing is that Vodafone clearly support it in places, and the phone connects fine. Perhaps it’s costing me a fortune. Does anybody know why it might be disabled by default?

I’m back – well at least that’s the theory. Armed with a new phone (Vodafone 1605, aka Q-Tech something aka HTC something else; it’s a shapeshifter) I now have a half-decent blogging tool that doesn’t induce RSI from bloody stupid predictive text.

Now to find something to post about…