So after that momentous sailing day to get past the river section, we now have a lot of time on our hands. Basically, here we are on the 10th October in Branston on the Trent and Mersey canal and we need to get to Willington for the 28th! That’s 18 days to do about 8 miles. Now, I like to take things easy and I certainly don’t rush about on the boat, bit even this is going to be a sllooowww cruise! Luckily, we have Burton upon Trent and a few other places where we can stop and take in the sights, so it should not be too bad.

Branston is quite a nice place and there is a great little pub where we had a few beers and something to eat after the long day’s sail. Our plan at the moment is to go into the marina just before we get to Burton upon Trent and get a pump out and fill up with water and Diesel (not that we will need much) and then stay at Burton for a few days before moving on. We will go into the mooring a bit early (on the 21st of a few days before) and then go and see Ron and Lyn for a few days, the drive back to stay with Dee and catch up with everyone.

So now we have 17 days to do the 8 miles to the marina – I think we’re ok 😋

A quick update…it is now the 17th October and we are now at Willington, and we will go into the Marina on Saturday or Sunday, ready for our visit to Ron and Lyn and the kids.

As I mentioned, we have been waiting for a while now for the river section at Alrewas to open. I have been looking at the government monitoring station and the water level was on the way down quite consistently, and yesterday (10 Oct 2019) the level dropped below the flood line on the chart. So I turned to twitter!!

I tweeted (that sounds so effeminate) the CRT boffins and asked them what the situation was with the section. About an hour later, Bess replied telling me that it was now open, and proceed with caution status – so we decided to go for it!!

What a long sail that was! 11 Miles with 11 locks, some of which are really stiff. Wendy had hardly slept the previous night and was tired (and a little ratty), but I think all this exercise did her good. When we got to Alrewas we moored up right at the top lock and walked down to see if we had room at the water point, which is just before the river section lock. We need not have worried – the place was deserted! Not a single boat was moored on any of the 48 hour moorings and there were only a handful on the 14 day moorings. We’ve never seen it like this before! So, it seems highly unlikely that the section had just opened after over a week!! Someone has been yanking our chain!

After navigating the river section, which was calmer than when we sailed up it and way less flooded, we cracked on until we got to Branston. This is mostly to avoid mooring besides the very busy A38 which soon borders the canal after the river section and stays with it for quite a few miles, and also because Branston has a nice pub and we needed a drink!! One thing we did notice was how quiet the canal was – we hardly saw any boats in all 11 miles – so different to when we started out.

So now we have 17 days to do the 8 miles to the marina – I think we’re ok 😋

We have been waiting for a while now for the river section (see above in red) to open. The river levels have been falling and the river is now not considered in flood, so we think the section will open imminently – however at the moment it is still closed. We are looking at some options to do a bit of sailing (we get bored quickly) with the possibility of going down the Coventry canal to Tamworth. Of course, we need to ensure we can turn around and get to Alrewas quickly when it opens. We also need to ensure we have water and pump out available too – so it does take some planning.

I will keep this post updated with where we go to and what we find there. At the moment we are waiting to see if the river section is going to open, if it does our plan is to get through it as quickly as we can!

• Rugeley
• Handsacre

We are going into Mercia Marina in October to moor over winter. We are staying for 4 months (unless the weather is still crap). We went along to take the car to Mercia so we will have it when we stay there. Whilst we were there we had a good look around to see what the pontoons are like and what the services offer – and we are both delighted and impressed! We are actually looking forward to going there now.

We are currently at Handsacre and we will continue up the canal to Great Haywood, where we will turn around and sail back to Willington. The only fly in the ointment is that there is a tiny river section at Alrewas which is currently closed due to flooding and we need it to be open before we can get back to Willington and the Marina – so fingers crossed we get enough dry days for the river to lower. Here is what we did since leaving the Barton turn Marina.

A slight issue is that between us and our marina is a small river section at Alrewas and just after we sailed into Alrewas they closed it!! It had better open again before we need to get to Mercia on the 28th, and certainly before we fly to South Africa on the 13th! Fingers crossed

• Alrewas
• Fradley Junction
• Handsacre
• Rugeley
• Great Haywood

That’s the trouble with Dogs: They just don’t live long enough and you have to face saying goodbye. Sadly our lovely Honey never managed to get beyond this Friday the 13th. It was one of the toughest decisions we have had to make, but she was beginning to suffer with lots of things going wrong and with no real prospect of recovery, we decided it was best to bring her adventure to an end in the kindest way we could, so in the evening of the 13th she finished her last gravy bone biscuit and went to sleep.

Anyway, now are back and getting used to living on board without her we are pausing at the marina for a bit to let Wendy’s back heal a bit, as it is very sore at the moment and she is on lots of drugs to keep the pain in check. The boat feels very empty without Honey and we keep looking for her or expecting to have to clamber over her as she layes completely in the way.

Our next destination for October is Stoke on Trent, where we plan to turn around and then sail into Mercia marina. We will be leaving Barton turn Marina on the 29th.

So now we need to seriously start to think about the trip back to Swindon. We were going to hire a car, but that does not really work as we need our passports and we cannot put the dog in it! Doh! So, instead we will go into the marina a day early and I will get a cab to the train station at Burton upon trent. Its only a 3 hour trip back to Swindon where I will then pick up the car and drive the 2-3 hour trip back to the boat, load up with Wendy and Honey then drive back again! Sounds like a busy time for old fungus face!!

In the meantime we need to keep ourselves busy, so we will head down to Alrewas (no idea how you pronounce it) and hang around for a few days then turn around and head towards Barton-under-Needwood which is where the marina is. We need to get in on the 12th, so we have almost a week to kill. So in this post, I will take our journey from the very pretty place called Branston (Yes, like the pickle) and then Alrewas and back. Each link will activate when I have written the page!!

• Branston
• Alrewas
• Alrewas (on the way back)
• The Marina

Well, its been a blast and the Grand Union has been really rather spectacular to sail. The Leicester branch is one of the most attractive canals we have witnessed, Weedon and Market Harbourgh were really lovely. Foxton and the locks really are worth a visit and are the jewel in the canal network crown, but all good things come to an end. Having sailed to Kegworth and moored just outside, the tima came to decide what to do until September 13th when we pop back to Swindon. So the choice really comes down to where we can leave the boat securely, and that turns out to be on the canal and not the river. So, west it is – as someone once said (and no, not the bloody petshop boys) go west!!

• Shardlow
• Willinton
• Burton upon Trent

We left Leicester marina in the morning on the 20th and sailed a short way to Barrow upon Soar. Another very pretty little jaunt hopping on and off the river as it makes its way to Loughborough. We plan to meet up with Jackie and Karl and have a trip down the river with them for a day. We have not seen Jacks for over 12 years so it will be lovely to catch up!

• Barrow upon Soar and the trip with Karl and Jackie.
• Loughbourgh
• Kegworth – the last of the river Soar and Grand Union canal

Now that we have sailed from the centre of Leicester we passed through the most built up part, and in places it did look very urban! The locks were generally in poor condition with many of the paddles being broken. Still, overall the sailing was uneventful. I was really surprised at how quickly the canal started going through very rural looking parks, with lovely verdant rural surrounds. Our destination was Leicester marina where we plan to moor up for a few days and then taxi back to Leicester and go to the space center and do some shopping.

I have done away with the menu!. Each page will now have a list of all the other pages which allows you to navigate around far more easily and saves me the hassle of updating the menu each time I add a new page! I will keep adding posts with links to the latest pages in any case, so it is easy to follow our progress still.

• Leicester Marina
• The Space Center

We have heard all kinds of things about Leicester. From being likely to get Killed, sold into slavery, sexually interfered with, having stones thrown at you and that the people are generally horrible all the way to it being a lovely place to visit and the sailing is great! So, apart from the sexual interference (which is my preference) it sounded dire and it also sounded great! What to do? Well, we decided to take a look for ourselves and see what all the fuss is about. So from Foxton we needed to stop at Fleckney where there is a shop to replenish our supplies and on the way we can pump out too, then on to Kilby Bridge which is the last place we can moor before heading into Leicester, then we plan to get to a safe mooring and stop. Ideally we’d get to the center and have a look around for a few days but we will have to see.

• Fleckney
• Kilby Bridge
• Friar’s Mill – the heart of Leicester
• Exploring Leicester