Well, what a day!  

At 9 am we were ready to go so I thought I'd better get geared up and off the boat to help with the locks. We have a good system for flights of locks: I go ahead and fill/empty the next lock (providing no one else is approaching for the current state of the lock).  When it's prepped I open the gate and The Mate drives straight in leaving The Man to close up the previous lock. By this time THe Man has walked down to where we are and I walk on to the next.

The first 5 locks were right in front of where we moored last night and all were to fill. It wasn't long until we reached the second flight of locks, the ones at Adderley. Now, these 5 worked well, us going down and another coming up at each lock so we could each leave the gate open for the other and it was ready to cruise into.

Well, now for the big flight at Audlem: 15 locks in quick succession. All of them empty and needing filled before we could make our descent! My back was beginning to ache after today's 25 locks!

On my laptop I had named this folder of images "Heartbreak Hill" but in the evening I was told I was mistaken, the Audlem locks are nowhere near as many as Heartbreak Hill. That treat is still to come!