Aground at Grindley

This morning we woke up to a frost and the promise of sunny weather so we set off to Grindley Brook to once again tackle the staircase lock, this time in reverse  - going downhill should have been easier, the advice notice says: top lock full, middle lock filled to the mark on the lock gate (what mark?) bottom lock empty. All fairly straightforward BUT the lock gates leak badly and as fast as you empty one it's busy refilling itself! Ali ran round a bit trying not to panic but not getting very far with the process of prepping the locks. There were a couple of Canal and River Trust guys hanging (sorry - working) around at the top gate and eventually one of them offered to help, even then we got the levels slightly wrong and Micky Jay ran aground, not good news. Baz at this point suggested that if we took Ali's handbag off the boat we would float again no problem - cheek! Needless to say we refilled the lock.
With Grindley Brook behind us we then worked our way through another six locks before mooring in the middle of the countryside just outside of Marbury village, it's a pretty spot with open views both ways.

Today's view from the Galley Window

Some chores don't change - it was nice to be able to 'peg out' though.

We are anticipating several days of rain so are planning to stay in the current mooring until the end of the week at least. We are a few meters away from the official moorings so are using our chains to hook up to the metal edging of the cut, this means that we can stay here for up to 2 weeks rather than 48 hours. 

We are now about 9 miles and 12 locks from Hurleston Junction and the end of the Llangollen.

Bye for now

Ali and Baz