30th May 2015

We left our overnight mooring at just after 9am and soon cleared 2 locks.  We then stopped to pick up diesel and leave behind unwanted waste products at Stone’s Chandlery opposite the old Joule’s Brewery.  We met up again with single hander on Elk a 72 ft boat which had apparently been underwater for some years before being refloated but is still in need of a lot of TLC.  It took some time to reach the last of the Meaford Locks by which time we had climbed a total of eight.  We had by then covered 2.8 miles at an average speed of 0.8 mph.

We met quite a lot of boats approaching the locks before Etruria and learned that there was an “unofficial” festival so we moored up early between locks 38 and 39.  Our average was by then up to 1.3 mph and we had covered a total of 9.7 miles.  In the evening we walked around some of the traditional and not so traditional boats at the festival.

Is this the narrow boaters’ dream house?  A dock of your own in the garden.

Elizabeth and Victoria.  Elizabeth, we were told,  was one of the first narrow boats to ever be converted into a pleasure boat  in 1937.  Not the two layered superstructure.