Fazeley to Yardley Wood in one day

It's the sort of cruising we might have done in our shared ownership days. We set off from Fazeley at 0630 and didn't stop until we reached Lyons Boatyard on the Stratford Canal, 23 miles and 38 locks later. We have a change of tenant at our house near here and wanted to check the place over. We are going to have to paint every room and organise replacing carpets. We'll be very busy for the next few days.

Again, apologies for the lack of photos. I don't think I've described our journey from Ilkeston. We did the first leg with son Andrew. He'd driven down from Sheffield; we did a car shuffle and boated to Shardlow. The next day we stopped at Barton Turn. Not the quietest of moorings, especially as there were night-time resurfacing works on the road bridge above us.

Leg 3 was Barton Turn to Fazeley. Having read Derwent6's blog we stopped at King's Orchard Marina for gas and diesel. Not far from there we encountered Del and Al in person. Del was hard at work on their battery problem but we chatted to Al for a while. Del did poke his head out of the engine room for an exchange of greetings.

And the last leg I have already summarised. We met Lisa and Dave on What a Lark near the top of the Curdworth flight - good to see you again.

Our next scheduled port of call will be the Black Country Boating Festival next weekend; we're hoping to be able to get there a day or so early in order to help set up, as in previous years. We'll see how we get on with jobs at the house.