Black Country Living Museum

Like most of the country we enjoyed an enormous thunderstorm on Monday night. It woke us up at about four-thirty. At times when it was right overhead the thunder shook the boat. We managed to drift back off to sleep and once the rain had stopped we decided to cruise up to the junction with the New Main Line, wind the boats and head back to the Black Country Museum.

This is one of my favourite museums, there is so much to see, I recommend a visit even though we didn't go in on this occasion. There is also the opportunity to take a trip through the Dudley Tunnel, one which we can't take Morgana through. There are secure moorings here, confusingly where we are moored says 48hrs at one end and 24hrs at the other but as we are moored right beside the sign that says 48hrs that's how long we are staying.

Today we took the bus into Dudley, it would be walkable but I didn't fancy doing that in the current temperatures and now that Ray has his 'old codgers' bus pass at last at least we only had to pay the fares for me. Dudley has the normal range of shops that one can expect these days in most high streets and also a small market. Towards the mid afternoon we managed to pick up three punnets of strawberries for £1, as they were about 1lb weight each it has given us enough to make a gallon of strawberry wine which is now starting to brew. Some of them were a bit soft but none would have been thrown away even if we had been intending to eat them.

Tomorrow we intend to head part way back to Birmingham and then into the city centre on Friday for the weekend.

Yesterday's journey 1.7 miles

This year we have travelled 313.1 miles, 288 locks, 6 swing bridges, 13 lift bridges and 6 tunnels

In 2012 we travelled 876.9 miles, 675 locks,  55 swing bridges, 23 lift bridges and 31 tunnels

In 2011 we travelled 461.4 miles, 444 locks, 3 swing bridges, 34 lift bridges and 15 tunnels

During 2010 we travelled 740.3 miles, 642 locks, 53 swing bridges, 4 lift bridges and 25 tunnels

Since Ray retired we have travelled 2391.7 miles, 2049 locks, 117 swing bridges, 74 lift bridges and 77 tunnels