Leys Junction

 Well last night was interesting, safely tied up in the basin, the wind picked up, the rain lashed down and muggins here had left his Ipad on the slide all night so it was quite damp this morning when I got it in, much to my surprised it still works. That's not the end of my technical woos, I have two lap tops with me, one the screen had died so I have no idea what's happening. The other has a faulty charger socket and has to lay very still and it may charge, its also suffering the blue screen of death every now and again. I have just come in the boat and the phone is as dead as a dido.

Anyway at 10 am this morning the sun was out, the rain had gone away and we had a good pumpout and fill up with diesel before heading on our way at quarter to eleven. Leaving Hawne Basin was interesting with two of the moored in the basin having their bows well across the entrance, or in our case exit bridge hole.
Once out its a very tight turn towards Gosty Tunnel, Pat and Sheila were on there boat to wish us goodbye and we were off. An uneventful trip to Windmill End Junction where it was again hard left toward the Delph locks, about half way there it hammered it down with rain again, but we stopped at Blowers Green to fill with water and also have a bit of lunch, when we had finished both the rain eased for a bit and we joined the Dudley Number One Canal at Parkhead Junction. We made the decision to stop at Merry Hills for a bit to see what the weather thought it might do. Looking back towards Hawne Basin there was a very low, flattish rainbow.After about an hour we decided the weather was going to hold and set off to the  locks, Just as we did so we met a boat, both commenting it was the first we had seen on the move today. Now the strange thing the locks are only just round the corner but the first and second chambers were both empty but after that the others were ether almost full or full. Our normal procedure is to fill the next chamber with the water from the lock above, but even so there was a lot of water going over the weirs. This was fine until we came to lock 9 which only has a small by-wash so the complete lock area was flooded, A gallant chap waded into 4" of water with Diana to open the top gate.The water was topping the top gate and flooding the towpath and all the lock surround with a rapids running down under the bridge to the tail of the bottom lock.Once in the lock and dropping the chamber this was my view from the bottom of the chamber.Once clear of the flight things improved greatly, the only sign we saw of the recent pollution incident was a little floating material that was used in the clean up and this swan with bit of a black chest.We carried on to moor for the night just above the Stourbridge flight of locks.

Todays Journey 10 miles, 10 locks in 5½ hours