Handsacre

We had a bit of rain overnight and early this morning a load of geese flew over, I don’t know why they have to talk to each other all the time.
We were away earlier than usual just as a few hundred more Canada Geese went over.I haven’t seen so many geese for probably 30 years on the N Norfolk coast.
The morning was fine and dead still as you can see from this photo, we had hoped to fill with water but there was a boat already there.

We carried on to Bagnall lock and as we were leaving a boat arrived from above, passing under the A513 the towpath side pant work is in better condition than the offside. Of course the graffiti crowd have had a dorb here and there but on the whole its still not too bad. 

Just before Common Lock we passed the entrance to Fradley Marina. Although the entrance is below the lock the actual marina straddles the lock.

We met another couple of boat so hopefully Hunt’s Lock would be with us, as we got closer I could see there was a Volockie on duty who opened the gates ready for our arrival. One of the boats on the long term moorings below the lock has twin electric outboard engines mounted on the stern of his boat, I don’t know if this is his only form of propulsion.

As we entered Hunt’s Lock I hopped off on the offside to close the gate, but I wasn’t needed. The Volockie had a line tied between the two gates on the handrail at the mitre so that he could pull the off gate shut from the side he was standing. He told there were Volockies working all the locks, so I asked him to inform the one at Junction Lock we were stopping for water.
The water tap seamed to take for ages and 2 or 3 boats came by while we were filling up, needles to say the last one was just before we were ready to leave so we had to wait behind them at the lock. We met boats at both Middle and Shade House lock so a steady run.
There is no apparent progress on HS2 in the area of Woodend but the lock cottage still loos surprisingly secure.
Passing JF boat fitting at Kings Bromley their moorings looked almost empty, even the boat that is normally moored on line in front of the bungalow was gone. However there were three boats moored outside their new premises and it looks as if they have their own crane on site which could be useful.

We were now experiencing the odd spot of rain along with sunshine and the sky was turning quite dark in places. We didn’t really have a plan on where we would stop, so when we saw a long gap at Handsacre we pulled in there and not long afterwards another boat filled the gap pulling in behind us.

Today’s Journey

6¼ miles, 8 locks in 4 hours