DINNER AND SAUSAGES

TUESDAY 29TH APRIL 2008

On Monday we just pottered, catching up on boat work, when Tug from Golden Eagle invited us to dinner that evening, he did eventually clear this invite with his wife Kirsty. Again, another example of impromptu canal hospitality.

Tuesday morning, we got away slightly the worse for the amount of wine drank with Tug & Kirsty, thanks guys for the splendid curry. The six locks of the Astwood flight were nothing, but just following those is the 30 lock flight of Tardebigge, this is the final lift to the level approach to Birmingham. The weather turned very wet and the forecast for Wednesday was also wet, so we pushed in the pins at Stoke Works and decided to stay put until the weather improved before tackling this major climb.

Tug had suggested that we did not go through narrow locks with our sausage fenders down and as we had got hung up in a lock when one of these fenders got caught in the lock ladder and coming through the Stratford locks, the fit was so tight that we ripped off one fender and cut another in half, we thought this was good advice and bought 3 karabiners ( spring clippy things as used by mountaniers) so that we can simple clip on the sausages when we moor up.