gatekrash

At least that had a proper brace on it. This was Lapworth a few weeks ago. It wasn't just these 2, a couple of the other gates on the flight felt like the beams were not far off failure either. I did like the yellow sticky tape covering the raw end of the metal work!

We've had the stove in a couple of times at home this week, including tonight, earliest I can remember lighting in September. We have had it lit in June before though 😀

Notice has been updated this morning to 6'10". Or 208.3 cm. Looks like someone couldn't do maths 😂

I see they've issued an update saying that navigation is closed to all boats wider than 2.06m as the walls have cracked and bulged. That's a shade over 6'9", so closed to most boats at 6'10" (2.083m). Guessing they've told ABC and Black Prince, because that's possibly their entire fleets stuck above / below the flight.

It's like it on the north Stratford as well, never seen so much, it's like a carpet.

If you like cabalie, try the Aldi Italian Primitivo at 6.29 a bottle, it's lush !

Nice wine, a dozen in the rack right now 😁

We were in there last week (Tony that must have been you on the end then) and reversed out of the swing bridge side arm to turn. Tony's boat wasn't the problem, it was the ones moored on the bollards outside the Portuguese cafe, the ones that have big 'no mooring' signs all over them. By the time we'd backed out of the arm and turned the stern the bow fender was pretty much in their windows. Probably why it says no mooring there 😁

I can turn my Janner accent on or off at will, varying it from full on Janner that nobody really understands in the Midlands down to a much softer Devon accent which (I hope) is much easier on the ear. My Mrs hates Janner despite being a Janner herself so I try not to be too broad when she's in earshot. Cue loads of you googling Janner now !

I promised to report back on Coventry basin. Arrived in the gales on Sunday, and pushed into the far end of the right hand arm. Boats already by the swing bridge, and at 90 degrees across the end of the 2 arms. Basin is a good spot, generally quiet other than a few tourists looking at boats and asking us if we sold tickets for a trip. No issues in there other than someone jumping on the bow locker to take pictures (whilst we were sat in the cratch, he clearly didn't give a toss). And randomly someone hung a bunch of rotten bananas off our bow mooring line during the night. Cleaning team went through the basin first thing in the morning and the site was clean and tidy. Coventry itself reminds me completely of my home city, Plymouth, which was also blitzed. It's a mish mash of 50s / 60s brutalist concrete architecture mixed in with a 'modern' shopping precinct. In fact I reckon they used the same architect.! We thought it was worth a visit for a couple of days, and if I needed a shopping stop and a good mooring for a night then I'd happily go back, but it won't be a go to destination for a few years. And @Laurie Booth the chippy on Sandy Road was very good and worth the walk! When we came to leave, the basin was rammed, both arms. There were also a couple of boats on the 'no mooring' bollards outside the cafe, which along with the one across the end by the statue made winding interesting. Clearly it is a reasonably popular spot these days.

We've got a small alpicool fridge /freezer thing. Ours is only a 15l one. We use it intermittently mainly as a freezer if we've either had to cook too much and want to freeze something for a few days time, if we want ice for G&T 😀, if we've bought too much meat etc. It goes on with the inverter when we're motoring, then sits in the cratch running off the bowthruster battery on 12v once we've stopped for the day, as we're not bothered if that goes flat anyway. It's not a huge drain on the batteries,. It's really good that you can just set the temperature so you can decide if you want things cool, cold, ice cold or frozen solid... It's also come in useful as a small fridge running off the cigarette lighter socket in the car when we've been driving home from the boat and the M5 is closed, meaning we're having a 6 hour trip home. I wouldn't really want it as my main fridge, it's not big enough, but it's a really useful 'luxury' at this time of year.

It's not leaking. But there is a whole load of plastic sheeting in the canal outside the dam just in case the badgers dig through into the cut. The guy we were chatting to at the ACA shop says they're due to have someone in next month to look at relocating the badgers and then the plan is to pile around the bit they've been digging, so it should be reopen next year.

I can 100% confirm that the George and Dragon at Stoke Golding is worth the trip from Droitwich. My sort of pub, it's like a permanent mini beer festival. Just wish we hadn't had such a big curry at the Indian restaurant up the road first, cos I could only manage a couple.

We moored on pins the other night, we had them off you for a tenner at Dunhampstead a couple of years ago. If I'd known you were only knocking windlasses of at a fiver I'd have asked for a discount. 😂

We had 4 different plans running based on that Curdworth stoppage, and 2 of them were based on the fact that they said they'd provide an update on day X when they actually got around to it 2 days later. The farmers bridge issue we got caught up in we spoke to the guys on the ground and the 2 of them dealing with it both gave us a different story about the issue and the comms they'd had from the call centre staff. We asked them if they could get a stoppage notice out for Ashted and Aston so people didn't try coming up into an empty pound , but it took several hours before it happened. Then when we did get to Curdworth and started down the flight, the staff on the locks asked why we were coming down when the flight wasn't officially open, despite the fact we'd already had the notification to say it was ! There does seem to be a definite 'left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing' going on at the moment. I know we're less stressed by it than you are as if we're a few days off schedule it's not critical, just a bit of a PITA, but the timeliness of their updates does seem a bit crap at the moment.

And here are the badgers ! Or at least the dam they've had to install to try and stop them causing a breach. Whilst we may not be able to get the boat to the end, we had to walk down to look and found probably the biggest crop of blackberries I've seen in years, so there was a silver lining.

Bloody badgers !! Thanks, we didn't know that.

We stopped there this morning as we needed to walk to Lidl for some shopping, but we didn't bother going in as I checked back on the forum and saw you said it had gone downhill. Now at the aqueduct near Shenton, doing the battlefield visitor thing tomorrow to keep Mrs G happy before we head off for the end of the arm. As we're only 50 foot we're going to go right to the end to wind. It's very very shallow up here at the moment, level looks like it's down the best part of a foot. Coventry basin in a few days so we will report back.

I was about to say we saw these earlier, they were still in the Yale lock so we hung them on top of the tap. My Mrs put a post on a faceache forum, but I didn't think to stick anything on here. Glad they've been located.!

I've found all the boats !! They were heading west on the Coventry between Polesworth and Hartshill. We must have met at least 30. I think there was a boat club on the move as a lot of them had pennants on. Thought it might quiet down above Atherstone but not really. Quieter up the Ashby though.

My Mrs uses a Go Windlass and really likes it, when we get back into Droitwich in a couple of weeks if you're around you're welcome to come and have a look.

@mattuk1980 not sure where you are in relation to Curdworth yet, but current situation to help you out is... Top lock is just on weir now, and the minworth locks are all running through the bywashes so water is coming down. Between lock 1 and 2 is about a foot down. It's a long pound so will take a while to come up. Probably overnight. Between lock 5 and 6 was dry but that was because a boat was coming up and they had emptied the pound to fill the one below 6. They said everything below was fine. I reckon as long as they've really sorted the leak then you'll pass us on the way through, there's nobody from CRT doing anything actively with the flight anyway so I think it's another case of sort it ourselves.

Did you end up at Tipton or push on to Wolverhampton then ? We were expecting there to be lots of moored boats at Curdworth waiting but three on the cuttle bridge, none above the tunnel where we've stopped, and only 1 above the top lock. Just checking water levels now.

We thought about it, but to be honest we were almost as fast up backwards as when we went down forwards. Now back in Brum, we'll try the Stratford tomorrow, stop at the Blue Bell and go down Lapworth Tuesday, there's a Mikron theatre show at the top lock on Tuesday evening so will probably walk back up there and then head off Hatton way Wednesday. He's still here...

Yep. The CRT emergency guys helping at farmers said they were sorted. However we are now stuck at the next to bottom of farmers bridge. We've been running water down for 4 hours so far and I reckon we're still about a foot off being able to risk it. Level is increasing at about 1-2 inches an hour based on the photos I've taken of the brickwork so we won't move until 9. I'm not spending the night here as it's definitely NOT somewhere to stop, so we are about to go backwards all the way up the flight. Guy in front of us tried getting out of lock 13 and got stuck on the bottom cill. We've flushed him out, but he can't now shut the bottom gate again as the level is too low and the gate is jamming. Oh well, these things are sent to try us 😂