So much better weather

Today, as I said this morning, was going to be a bit of a marathon. We have completed almost 16 miles and 23 locks. The Hatton flight is a bit of a monster but we managed it in 3 hours and 40 minutes including stopping for soup part of the way down. Well, it was lunch time and we were hungry. Oh, and we were catching up on the people in front of us who had loads of help but were still horribly slow!

But before Hatton was Shrewley Tunnel. 396m of dark, wetness. Ian managed to get the tunnel light working a few minutes before we arrived and we didn't meet any hire boats coming the other way so we got through without any damage :-)

Also, during the less manic bits of the day we managed (ok, mainly Ian managed) to get the stove finally fitted and screwed to the floor so it can't fall over spilling hot coals everywhere. This evening we lit it for the first time. It is soooooooo nice to have warmth and flickering flames in the corner of the room.

As usual I'm having trouble uploading pictures to the blog in the evening but for some reason they've gone up to my Facebook album without any problem so have a look here and here if you can't wait until the morning.

Tomorrow we're heading for Napton-on-the-hill.