Hopwas or bust

Today we tried to set off early but as always things didn't go to plan. 

We knew today would be a long day as we wanted to get out of the bandit country of Tamworth and back into quiet rural moorings for the evening. 

The first place of note was Hartshill Yard, looking very traditional. 

There are eleven locks in the Atherstone flight and they must be the slowest filling locks in the country. Or so we thought. 

Apparently when the working boats were going downhill turbulence was not a problem as the boats were empty but going uphill the boats were heavily laden and turbulence could cause problems with the load so the locks were purposefully designed to fill slowly but empty quickly. 

We were in a queue at every lock so further behind schedule. 

We were also worried about getting the chimney under the bridges, but slowly does it and steering to the right whenever possible we made it intact. 

 

Our onboard toilet is very like a bank account. The more you deposit the more interest it generates. We were all interested in getting a pump out so at the first available opportunity we did.  It involved turning around to get the tank on the towpath side and then £20 for a pump out with added blue as part of the service. Hey ho, sometimes you just have to pay. 

After the pump out the blue would not go down the pipe and it turned out the tank had not been fully emptied and we had a blockage. Intriguing conversations followed with the children about exactly what had gone down the toilet but in the end we concluded there were no erroneous items there. The man who could turned the mean green pump out machine upto maximum and yes, the blockage got sucked out and the toilet is still on commission for the rest of the trip. Much relief that we will have onboard relief was prevalent but we were further behind schedule. 

Next were the Glascote locks which were even slower to fill. Two locks took over an hour and one even had poetry at one side to read whilst you were waiting. Even further behind schedule. 

Despite all of this and the occasional torrential downpour we made it to Hopwas and went to the Tame Otter for a lovely meal with Peter and Janet who were fantastic company. 

A superb day, but nine hours at the tiller, but now the little ones are off to bed and time for the grown ups to spend the final few minutes before exhaustion gets the better of them too celebrating their first wedding anniversary. 

One year today.