Further adventures . . .

. . . in which we are once again undone by our musical tastes, we see a favourite granny, Kath goes in for the wet T-shirt competition,  Herbie breaks her lock speed record, and lots of good stuff to see.

Where was I?  Oh yes Alrewas.  Well that was a while ago and our dongle signal has been poor, so now I have a backlog of stuff to tell. I'll just stick to the good bits.

We pressed on to Willington which was  'er, alright.  In the pub quiz at the Dragon, we were doing quite well until it came to the music round, then the generation gap got us.  Somewhere near there we passed the famous Granny Buttons at its moorings.  Andrew Denny was nowhere to be seen, probably out hacking boater's phones to find tit bits to write in Waterways World. (Sorry Andrew, I'm sure you wouldn't. Well fairly sure anyway.)

Then on through Burton on Trent.  Yes, through the most well known brewery town in the UK without stopping!  Well, it didn't look all that appealing.

Then Shardlow.  Ooooh Shardlow, you little cracker!  What a great place if you like old wharves and warehouses.  This is the start of the Trent and Mersey Canal, and bears it well.  It oozes canal history.
 
Just a few pics to give you a flavour . .

Our entrance to Shardlow was one we'll remember.  Kath did her impression of an entrant to the wet T-shirt photo competition as she got caught in a sudden downpour whilst off looking for places to moor.  I might have photographed her for you but I am unable to as I have a strange aversion to having my nose punched!

Then today, out onto the mighty Trent through Sawley from where what seems like a thousand hire boats emerge onto the canal on a daily basis.

and finally the right turn into the River Soar, our water for the next few days.  This river features the worlds fastest locks.  We did two of them each in ten seconds!  Well' it's not hard when the gates are open at both ends and you shoot straight through. 

In times of flood, they operate like a normal lock.

So far, I like the Soar a lot

Except that some of the locks are scarily deep like this one at Kegworth.  Not surprisingly it bears the name Kegworth Deep Lock.  How do they think them up?

For tonight we are moored up literally six inches from a pub called the Otter.  If I took a photo out of the boat window, you would just see a plank six inches away.  So I won't.  If we were any closer we would be evicted at closing time.

I'm soarly tempted to use up some of the many easy puns about the Soar, but I'll give it a miss.