9th June '12

well we got off - actually out of the marina!!! It was cold and windy and we were well wrapped up (you know how June can be) but we made it.

Yesterday to cheer me up we went to the pictures (do you say that now? is it the cinema or the movies? whatever we went) and saw Red Tails - definately worth seeing, however would suggest that buying the largest size of popcorn is not a good idea. Felt decidedly sick all evening.

Anyway, we got out about 11am and promptly stopped at Willington to get paper, lottery and milk. That done we started properly on our way, covering very familiar ground, remembering previous trips along the canal and basically acting like a couple of old farts (so out of character I hear you say).

We were stunned by the level of the water in the River Dove - previously it was barely a trickle and now it's over the banks and covering quite a lot of land either side. Hopefully this is good news for canals and rivers generally, we need the water.

I discovered that taking the boat in and out of locks is fairly painful with a frozen shoulder (my right one is almost half way through the 18 month process) but have decided that painkillers and possibly some alcohol will probably help it. Managed to bang the boat a bit going into the first one but I got better through the day!

Paddy has forgotten how to be a boat dog I think. He was wearing his life-jacket (more for warmth than anything) and kept giving us 'tell me why we are doing this? I'm very cold and fed up you know' type of looks. He spent much of the time winding his lead around my legs meaning I had to spend equal amounts of time getting untangled. John felt that he would be alright off the lead but somehow I couldn't bring myself to do it - visions of him falling/jumping in were prevalent in my thoughts.

We got to Barton Turns - some of you will be nodding knowingly at this point and saying 'not bad for a first day' others will be thinking 'what is the woman on about? how are we meant to know where that is?'. Well basically it's 10 miles and 4 locks away from where we started, on the Trent and Mersey Canal in a south west direction. Hope that helps. We took about 5hours or so to do this and ironically we had driven past here yesterday and it's about 20 minutes down the road!

Still not worked out how to add pictures but will persevere.