Crow knocked at 3am to enquire after breakfast.

It seemed that whoever was in charge of the weather finally picked up his/her voicemail messages, because the day started warm but overcast, clearing up to a beautifully sunny day, although not too hot as it had been last Saturday.

Which was actually a good thing as we had over twenty odd locks facing us.

Mum and Dad saw a handful of baby swifts sitting on a branch getting fed by their parents on the fly. Or at least that was according to Mum. In Dad’s version they were swallows. I’m leaning towards the swallow theory at the moment given the amount of them about, buzzing us all like little spitfires.

Chris and I lay in until after 8.30am, when we were roused with the cry of ‘fifteen minutes to the next lock!’. Which in fact materialised about six minutes later just as I was erm… not fit to be seen by the public at large and I don’t think Chris was much better. However, organised and willing, we got decent and jumped off the bow with windlasses in hand.

Two locks later, we moored up near the Hack Green Super Secret Nuclear Bunker which we went to visit. It was interesting if you like historical stuff and looking at large quantities of army type paraphernalia and WW2 newspaper clippings, which actually kept three of the party very happy.

However, the last part of the exhibition was educational and shocking to even the most indifferent of visitors I think. A video included footage of people, and I’m talking British, in Britain, some in Rochester, who were terminally ill with radiation sickness and not saveable, and without enough drugs to go around, they had to be left to die in excruciating agony. Local policemen were given the task of putting these people out of their misery with pistols.

There was of course a billboard display of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and the last room was a sickbay displaying the levels of radiation sickness, what the symptoms were and life expectancy, all graphically illustrated. Actually pretty depressing.

On the other hand, for the kiddies there were mice of various descriptions all over the place, except the gruesome rooms which were signposted as not kiddie friendly of course. They spy mice even had their own WC which was very cute.

There were a group of older people, of which one gentleman was very clearly challenged and became distressed every time he lost sight of his wife. I was talking with one of the other men, who said that the distressed gentleman was actually very clever and was involved with the Bunker on a civilian level some years ago. Unfortunately, he’d been in a car accident a couple of years ago and as a result was brain damaged; his friends had brought him to the Bunker to see if it meant anything to him. It didn’t.

On a lighter note, Mum finally saw little fluff ball baby moorhens.

Chris had arranged a meeting with prospective employers at the Shroppie Fly, (because they were too impatient to wait until we got back) a short way into the flight of fifteen locks that we had to do, and buggered off to go and meet with them. He got fed lunch and offered a second interview when we get back home.

Up the flight, we followed Gareth, a single retiree who by his own admission doesn’t know how to retire. On this particular flight he was struggling; struggling to hold the boat to shore in the pounds, jumping the gates, and legging it, pushing gates open, except the gates weren’t doing what they were told and the boat wasn’t behaving. So when Chris caught us up, we loaned him out to Gareth in order to facilitate both our progress.

After the locks we encountered an unusual obstruction in the canal, a cow. Gareth was moored and the cow for some reason had come to talk to his dog. Fortunately cow decided to give way to us.

Just before the next flight of five locks, Hawksmoor came home. Or rather, I should say, passed under Bridge 72 of the Shropshire Canal, officially named Hawksmoor Bridge. Pictures had to be taken, obviously.

Mum and Dad saw a kingfisher. Apparently. According to all the noise at the stern. At the bow we failed to spot it. However, we did spot a couple of herons today, and Dad spotted a red kite (the bird, not the toy).

After much debate, we hit the final five locks, which were in a gorgeous setting; a small red sandstone gorge, with plenty of trees and ferns, so you could easily imagine you were pottering up Indiana Jones or Lara Croft country.

We met two lads on a weekend trip who were on the way down. They had only been out of their marina five minutes and although both had done the canals before, they were a bit rusty. A bit rustier than they thought actually. I went ahead of our boat to the next lock where they were filling it up so they could get in it. With three paddles to play with, they’d opened up one (ground paddle) and when I arrived where debating whether to open the second (ground paddle). They decided between themselves that this was a good idea and went ahead. The one who was operating as ground crew remarked to me how slow the lock was. I suggested helpfully that they might like to open the third (gate paddle). Looking somewhat dubious, they did as suggested and thanked me very much when the lock suddenly filled up very quickly. They banana’d their way in to the lock, Chris and I did the bottom gates and they banana’d their way out and across the pound to gales of laughter.

Once we reached the top, we were accosted by many boaters wanting to know if the locks had survived these two. Having ascertained that at least the top three locks had survived, all boaters proceeded to guffaw at the antics of the two lads who couldn’t hold a straight line if their lives depended on it.

Further up the canal, the jungle grew around us, the bridges being very high and vegetation sprawling along both banks. One heron stood guard, flying further down the canal every time we drew near, a second heron joining it a little later, and a buzzard launching out of the trees right in front of us.

When we came to moor, there was a distinct lack of spaces, but as usual, in the interests of sensible parking, there were large spaces with small boats in the middle, thereby preventing sixty foot boats from finding anywhere. However, sitting on the bank were two Yorkshire couples who volunteered to shift their boat at the end of one such space up a bit. They also volunteered to move the small boat in the middle, which created a space more than sufficient for Hawksmoor. As they went about making the necessary adjustments and clambered all over the small boat, they could be heard debating among themselves as to where the occupiers of the little boat were. They decided they hadn’t seen them in forever, and perhaps they were asleep. Oh well never mind, they said and proceeded to move little boat up the bank a few feet. It should be pointed out here that these Yorkshirites were satisfactorily tanked up on cooking sherry as they had otherwise run out of booze.

Mum cooked dinner on board. Yum.

Boys went off to pub. Girls played on boat.