Sarah's Entry - Saturday, 26th August

Marsden to Slaithwaite. We set off at 9am, with Chris in 'Timaru' behind us. The BW men were to escort us down the first ten locks of the flight of 22 we had to cover that day. They decided to put our boat and Chris's boat in at the same time. We were a bit anxious about this to begin with - knowing the problems of boats catching on the 'cill' as the water is emptying. However, we soon got the knack of it,a and no problems were had, except for a few times when there was an obstruction at the bottom of the lock, meaning we had to fill it a little and then re-empty to 'float the boat' again.

At the tenth lock down, we stopped to change the oil, being slightly over our '50' hours by now, at which the oil needs changing.

All went well - Penny expertly following the instructions she was given by Fraser - and Sarah writing them down for future reference. The cleaning up bit didn't go so well thought - both of us ended up with oil all over our clothes - something to do with bendy pipes and a sharp breeze. Enough said.

I popped into a cottage by the lock side before we continued our journey - using the weir as a crossing point, and falling on my backside in the process. But we got some nice homegrown yellow courgettes and a cucumber out of my expedition.

The next eight locks took half an hour each. Finally though, we arrived at Slaithwaite, where we had a meal, went to the pub, and planned our next adventures on the map!!