On the move again

I know I've been very quiet but that's because life has been mainly boring!

We have spent most of our time working round the cycle of Ray's treatments. The good news is that he is coping well with them most of the time and is now over half way through. He is still suffering some nausea and feeling the cold. On the up side he is now just above what he always considered his normal weight.

We had a nice visit from Tim, Margaret and Nicholas during half term,don't think I've already mentioned that. Then we had a visit from The Hobbins clan and the Bristol Jones for my birthday. We all went out for a meal on the Saturday night and then met up for lunch and birthday cake at the moorings on Sunday, the weather was very kind to us and we were able to spend some time outside. My wonderful son Keith bought us a fridge/freezer as a combined Christmas/birthday present to both of us to make up for the ones he missed!! It is good to have a working fridge again and even better to have a freezer again.

I've been growing some herbs from seed at the moorings and Ray has made some boxes to hold the pots on the top of the boat while we are travelling. I've some ginger beer and rhubarb wine brewing but apart from that we haven't really done a lot.

We set off from Ocker Hill on Thursday morning and are heading for Alvecote near Tamworth for Easter weekend. We are taking it slowly as Ray is still not 100% and a full day of cruising would be too taxing for him.

On Thursday we tackled the first eleven of the Perry Barr locks, then did the last two of Perry Barr and the Minworth three on Friday. Today we moved down the first seven locks of Curdworth locks.

We managed the stretch of the Tame Valley from Ocker Hill to the Perry Barr top lock without incident but then we had clear about half  dozen branches before we could start down the flight. All went reasonably well until lock 11 where we picked up a collection of carrier bags and rope and chain round the prop which gave us a good reason to call it a day! The next morning I had to let water down to fill the pound between 12 and 13 because the water level was so low but apart from that the rest of our journey has been uneventful.

There aren't many boats on the move, we have only seen a couple of boats a day, well none on Thursday apart from CRT work boats but that's no surprise on the Tame Valley.

This year we have travelled 16.3 miles, 23 locks and 1 tunnel

In 2013 we travelled 459.1 miles, 434 locks, 7 swing bridges, 15 lift bridges and 31 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 2554 miles, 2218 locks, 118 swing bridges, 76 lift bridges and 103 tunnels