Polesworth Sunday 24 July 2016

Well I really timed it wrong this morning, Just as I was about to unmoor I saw a day boat coming up behind, so thought it wouldn’t be very courteous to pull out in front of them I will wait. As they got closer I realised they were going extremely slowly and I would have had tons of time to leave and when they did pass a second boat came along. The result was that we had a convoy or 5 boats doing 2½ mph from Whittington to Hopwas where it dropped to 4 boats as the boat in front of me got fed up and moored. Every time they met a boat they stopped and I ended up following them all the way to Fazeley where we stopped to visit Hobbycraft. It was a group of ladies on a hen party. Just before Hopwas there was a tree trunk in the water that had been moored to the bank with loads of blue string, today the string was there but no tree trunk. We were to find the tree trunk about half a mile closer to Hopwas floating around in the canal, it was to big for us to do anything with so we just had to leave it there.

This mother duck was taking good care of her young ones with them sitting on her feet. Birds are very resourceful at times as this Wood Pigeon demonstrated by standing on the water dish to reach the seed feeder .

We had a good run through to Tamworth and arrived at the bottom of the Glascote Lock to find no one there and both locks empty, we had just started to go up in the first when 2 boats arrived below the lock, so we timed that right. Diana walked up to get the second one ready for me and a chap off the first boat walked up and helped me at the lock closing up behind me, by the time we were up in the second he was there again on the gate, he explained they had a crew of 4 so he left 3 of them to work the lock while he came ahead. Unfortunately his efforts didn’t speed things up as there was a boat approaching to go down. We carried on to Polesworth passing and waving to a few old friends and new acquaintances on the way. The visitor moorings before Polesworth where full which is quite normal, but what I didn’t expect was the number of boats moored the other side of Polesworth, we are almost down to bridge 51. Last time we were here on the 1st July I reported water bubbling up through the towpath, its still the same today.

Today’s Journey  11¼ Miles, 2 Locks, 1 Junction in 4¾ hours