Alway Swilby

Somewhere within an hour or so of home so you can go to the boat when you feel like it. If you're just parking the boat there to go home it doesn't matter much about the facilities. Electric post would be good.

It's lovely up here at Pelsall. Might go to the Finger Post for some food. I was amazed at how little we got round the prop on the way here from Wolverhampton. Thought we might go back via the Rushall flight then along the Tame Valley and go and see what all the fuss is about at Walsall. I've heard the art gallery is good?

That's because LadyG went to Lidl !!

It was huge, and to be honest there was so much other litter and junk (car seats were in abundance) strewn about everywhere that a pile of soaked horse coat on the towpath made little difference.

Not a patch on your haul. One weed hatch investigation producing a few bits of plastic bags. So thanks for collecting it all yesterday! I am very surprised we didn't pick up more, there's so much crap in there, it's quite disgusting really. I think we saw the padded horse jacket on the towpath, looked huge. We presumed that was Mrs Dreamer waving as we passed.

Will let you know tomorrow. Heading from Wolverhampton to Pelsall (all being well).

We encountered no problems (30" draught). We moored on the left after turning left on the way in. There was no weed either. She was out for a while. Two other cats sauntered along, we don't know if there was a standoff or not. There was no cat fight. Tilly prefers proper countryside though.

I'm trying to picture where this existing wharf is. Is it the big wharf on the left half a mile or so above Knostrop lock?

It depends! If there is a suitable long pound not more than a couple of locks up then I'll do it my self and then ring CRT to tell them I've done it. They do need to know so that they can replace the water you've used, even if it's from a 10 mile pound. I've never been told off for doing this.

We survived!! Actually we had a very peaceful night. Very little footfall, no loud voices on the way home from the pub in fact very little noise at all. (Unlike the previous night that we had spent on the bollards near Sainsbury's at Oldbury, there the local car sales place (Arnold Clark) play inane radio over their external car park speakers continuously until closing time (7.30pm on Sundays) and start it up again at 7.30 am the next morning.) We'll probably stay here at Tividale again and get a supermarket delivery. We don't really do pubs so I can't advise on the local hostileries but we enjoyed the peace.

Just pulled in here to have a look. Still devoid of moored boats. I think we'll stay the night.

No, I agree. I just use it to log our journeys, recording mileage and locks. I find it useful. For sat nav type maps I use Waterway Routes running on Memory Map on my phone. I used to use an old tablet but that got wet and didn't recover!

When coming down into Manchester last year we booked the very helpful CRT volunteer lock keeper, I think his name was Ian but I might be wrong. You do that by ringing the main CRT phone number 0303 0404 040. We set off from the Rose of Lancaster at about 07:30 and met the lockie an hour and a half later at lock 65. New Islington Marina was closed last summer (I don't know if it still is) so we went down two more locks and headed up the Ashton Canal about 1/2 a mile and moored in Piccadilly Basin, very quiet secure moorings. We did the Rochdale 9 early the next day down to Castlefield. Be prepared for unseamly goings on at the sub-terainian lock 85. You won't get bothered but there may be people there who are more interested in other things. As others have said the Ribble link is not too bad but I would change/clean your fuel filter a couple of days beforehand just to be safe and you need confidence in your cooling system as you could be running the engine hard for a couple of hours. Some suggest making sure your water tank is full so you can run off a calorifier of hot water to help with the cooling.

Must have been fixed now.

Is there anyone now supporting the Water Explorer website waterexplorer.co.uk ? If so I wonder if they know that as of yesterday evening it's not working. Multiple different errors. Or is it one of those websites that was set up as a personal hobby and has become too much to look after?