Home at last!

The final holiday cruise post! Off this morning at 09:00 to tackle the remaining Atherstone Locks. Fine progress until I reacher lock 5, then we all ground to a halt. The pound was out of water!

There we all were, breasted up and stuck ont he bottom - back on the Rochdale it seemed! It was OK, however, there were at least 8 BW officials mending a bridge just above the lock:

"Oh no Gov. - we don't know nothing about the water, we just mend the bridges!" Eventually a BW man did turn up and an hour later we were all able to move again. The reason? As usual, one boater coming down stream was told by BW that a boater had left the paddles up - here we go again. This is not true! Actually the lock keeper, (remember him? The chap witht he MBE for his dedication to the lock flight,) was on holiday sitting in his cottage and refused to come out and do anything and had clearly not told anyone how to manage the flight so as to keep water flowing. Now either his job is on the line and he's out to prove a point or BW have never trained their staff in succession management!

The rest of the trip back to Brinklow was slow due tot he intense amount of extreme traffic around and the very slow hire boats - at one point I was in a long line of 5 hire boats!

Still I'm home and the landline is getting the batteries back into top condition. Tomorrow I start the shopping, washing, cleaning etc as well as take my truck to the garage to have 4 new off road tyres put on - ouch!!