We wanted to leave !

We did spend an afternoon searching for a few of those ‘Geo Caches’.  Found two of them easily then collected clues for the third but ran out of time.  Apparently J R R Tolkien once lived here in Great Haywood.

We got up early next day.  After breakfast Bruce on Sanity came round the corner to the water point.  We agreed to swop places later.  Then Anglo Welsh started moving boats about with a huge crane so now the canal is blocked.  We had time for a drink while taking on water and waiting for the navigation to open. Finally got away by late morning and covered 13 lock miles to stop just short of Penkridge during a sunny but cold day. 

Woke up to find ice had formed over night.  Some determination is required to continue on our travels for we need the services of a vet for the cat and a medical centre for me. We were just getting ready to move when, would you believe it, a hire boat came by breaking up the ice.  So we followed them all the way to Penkridge.

It was there that we took Tara, our 15 year old cat, to see a vet one more time.  Tara had been suffering for some time from an overactive thyroid and had gone blind as well.  The vet agreed ‘to do the kindest thing’. We could not stay in Penkridge after that so continued on our travels and stopped at Gailey.  Several other boats were on the move so we found the ice all broken up.