Our first misty morning and we could hardly see the lock although we were only around 50 yards away.

We were joined on Oliver at about 11:30 by Toby, Sarah, Simon, Anne-Marie and Joel and at 12:00 we set off up the Tardebigge Flight.  With such a numerous and skillful crew we made cracking good progress.

We met one other boat that also had a crew of 7 so we had the unusual sight of fourteen people crossing at one lock.

We stopped for lunch in Lock 41 where there was a nice shady area for us to sit and enjoy a lovely  leisurely picnic all prepared by Sarah.

 

We had a good system that meant that as soon as Oliver had cleared one lock the next one was ready and waiting, while we made sure that no water was wasted down the side channels and we only had to stroll slowly between the locks.

It wasn’t until we were close to the top that we met any other boats and then there were three all coming down at the same lock – one of them refusing to co-operate and filling an empty lock rather than waiting for us to go up.

We stopped at the visitor moorings below the top lock and had an excellent BBQ, beautifully prepared once more by Sarah with Toby acting as assistant cook.

Joel had enough energy to try his hand at fishing while the rest of us just sat.  Perhaps this was a result of his short snooze on the lock arm?

If we ignore the 1 hour and twenty minutes we sat by Lock 41 for our lunch the 29 locks took us almost exactly 3 hours and 30 minutes.  This is as impressive average of only just over 7 minutes per lock.

After doing stalwart work on the washing up our visitors all departed and we were once again left to tackle tomorrow’s one and only lock all by ourselves.

Today’s wildlife.

We only saw one heron today and that was after we had moored.  He obligingly caught a fish (more than Joel did) while he allowed me to get quite close.