Berghill (a leisurely day)

On Saturday we are leaving the Montgomery canal and have to be at the locks at the start of the canal by 12.00 which is when they will be opened to let us through.  We thought the best thing on Friday would be to have a slow cruise to about a mile before the locks and moor somewhere quiet where I could get on with some log cutting.  We would then be in no rush to travel the last mile or so on Saturday morning.  I started casting off and dropped a piling pin in the water – what we call nappy pins.  It took about 15 minutes to fish it out with my magnet as it kept fixing on to the pilings on the side.

We went back up the three locks at Aston but no photos this time as we only came through them a couple of days ago.  I normally have at least 100 photos to filter through but Karen only took a handful today.  This is me waiting at one of the locks for Karen to get it ready.

Nothing much happened on the journey – we didn’t see a single boat on the move.  The most exciting thing we saw were these kayakers who were playing around rather than being serious.  If they are serious they overtake narrowboats but as they were fooling around I had to overtake them.

We found a lovely quiet spot where the towpath was extra wide and moored up there at lunchtime for the rest of the day.  Karen, as usual, jumped off first to help moor up and almost fell in - she hadn't realised the undergrowth was under water rather than dry land and got one foot completely soaked.  She ended up flat on the ground but I wasn't quick enough to get a picture.  Fortunately she had her slippers on so didn't soak her walking boots which would take a lot longer to dry out.

I got the chainsaw out and cut up enough logs to keep us going for a couple of weeks.

Karen took the picture above and posted it on our family Whatsup group calling it “Man at work”.  Sophie asked if I keep the mask on the boat and Steve responded, “Yes he does, he keeps it in the man cupboard with all his Fisher Price tools”.

As it's been a short entry I thought I would include the latest map of where we have been since moving aboard nearly a year ago.