An unusual alarm call this morning, and swans pecking the weed on the boat’s waterline.  We lifted the curtains to blue skies and even at 9am, it was getting hot.

We worked our way through Stoke Locks knowing at least one boat was in front of us, so we had to empty and fill each lock.

Our friend Simon has caught the canal bug, and offered to take a day off work and ‘do Tardebigge’, I’m not sure he quite knew what he was signing up for. We reached the bottom of the Tardebigge flight at 11am, and met Simon who had parked at the top and cycled down – the great ascent began.

After a couple of locks of steering tuition from Toby, Simon was helming all on his own, and in to some very tight locks.  There were a couple of nudges, but in the main, silence as Oliver glided in to the lock.

There was a working boat in one of the locks, with the CRT staff fixing the wobbly deck board. They pulled out of the lock when we were ready, and we showed out appreciation with ice poles (the first of four for each of us).

There is very little space between the locks, so we stopped inside one lock with a bench and ate our sandwiches, there were no boats in front or behind – it was very civilised.

We did swap, and Toby helmed for a few locks, while Simon opened some paddles and gates.

I was pleased that the flight meanders, and you rarely see more than one lock in front of you. I’m not sure I could have coped with 30 locks in front of me!

We finally moored up at 3:25, out came the camping chairs and we sat out in the shady towpath with another ice pole to recover.

Now here comes the silly bit. We then walked back down to the bottom of the flight to the pub (very nice pizzas), and had to walk the 2 miles back up to the boat.  Toby walked with Simon back to the car and we said our farewells – a BIG thank you to Simon for coming all of this way to help us through the locks, you’re welcome aboard any time.