Careful with your blog titles!

Wednesday 22^nd July; Dunhampstead to the marina

It’s going home day today.  It’s so much nicer to be out in the countryside than to be tucked in between two boats in a marina that we decided to do most of our packing where we were moored.

We even did much of the cleaning and tidying before we left.  Just before Dunhampstead tunnel is the boatyard where the sadly defunct Brookline Cruisers once operated.

Brookline no longer

Once through the tunnel we noticed the same slight scum that was on the water at the mooring.  Is this some dusty film from trees, or an algal bloom?  It’s not the same colour as the blue-green algae we saw one year at Westport Lake.

Scummy

It could be down to the general lack of boat movement I suppose, but I don’t think the encroaching reeds along this stretch can be blamed on that.

The volunteers are back at the Hanbury flight, and it wasn’t long before we were taking on fuel at the wharf and then mooring in our berth.  Bow first this time – the prevailing wind can make it difficult to come out again if we are moored stern in.  We had lunch on the boat and left in time to beat the rush hour round Bristol, so we had an easy journey home.

About the blog title ….  Herbie Neil’s ‘croc’ post yesterday made me laugh, but also reminded me of a couple of dodgy comments I received on my posts.  On ‘Another scorcher x2 and we get to Soulbury’ I got a delightful (not) comment the other day, telling me my clothes would look nice on their bedroom floor, and to click on a bodily feature if I was interested.  As I had a very attractive redhead expressing interest in last year’s ‘Another scorcher,’ and as it’s years since we’ve been to Soulbury, it occurs to me that there must be spambots toiling away on all blogging platforms looking for certain keywords.   Needless to say the comments didn’t get published!

3 locks, 2 miles, Dunhampstead tunnel.

Trip stats

85 miles, ¾ furlong and 124 locks.

74 miles ¼ furlong narrow canals, 1¼ furlongs broad canals, 12 miles 7¼ furlongs rivers.

119 narrow locks, 2 broad locks and 3 large (river) locks.

10 tunnels – Tardebigge, Shortwood, Wast Hill, Edgbaston,  Galton, Coseley, Wolverhampton, Dunsley, Cookley, Dunhampstead. Canalplanner tells me this is a total of 2 miles, 6½ furlongs underground.

It's taken me so long to finish posting this trip's blog that it's nearly time to come out again.  I'm off toake some more masks now.