A sticky night on the boat and it’s fair to say I was not looking forward to today and another 21 locks. We had a good hour before we hit the first lock and found  ‘Bones’, a single handed chap called Ray waiting for us.

It’s fair to say that I wasn’t impressed as it’s more effort for no reward.  How wrong could I be.

We only opened one gate.  Toby would go in first and I’d be on the other side with my trusty rope on a Karabina dangling down, Toby would then pass through the centre rope, and I pulled the boat across, Bones came in second.  I then opened one paddle and one gate and we carried on like this for the morning.

We did intend to stop for lunch but as the locks were in our favour, so we decided to carry on through the flight at Stockton Locks.  Ray was very trusting of Toby and suggested we tie the two boats together and Toby steer both boats into the lock.

All 21 locks done and I hadn’t even broken a sweat!  We pushed our luck a bit too far in the late afternoon in the hope of getting to Braunston; it started raining so we decided to moor up a bit early and watch some Wimbledon tennis!