Stopped by the Weather

Today was a day of locks - and little else. We set off early from Stoke Works "to beat the rush" and specifically to get in front of the two hire boats moored next to us, but hardly saw a soul all day. Unaccountably the first six locks of the Stoke flight took an hour, but once we started on the thirty of the Tardebigge flight we quickly got into a rhythm and fairly flew up. 

About to start on the Tardebigge flight

The folding bike came in very handy here and enabled us to ensure the next lock was always ready.

Nearing the top

We regularly swopped jobs between steering and lock-wheeling and made pretty steady progress up the flight. Towards the end we were taking exactly six minutes a lock and we arrived at the visitor moorings below the top lock 3 hours 25 mins after starting (so, say 3h 35m for the whole flight?) and that included a coffee stop at the Halfway House.

View from the reservoir (which was full).

By now though the weather was taking its toll. With temperatures approaching 25 C our lunch stop became an afternoon stop as it was judged too hot to continue. Mark took the bike over to Bromsgrove to spot freight trains on the Lickey Incline whilst I had a kip and did a few jobs on the boat until late afternoon when it was cool enough to continue.


After posting this I went to update the days/miles/locks counter on the sidebar and found that Tardebigge Top Lock was the 2,500th lock that Starcross and I have done together.