18th -24th May........SHATTERED!

Well, we had a re-check for our certificate on thursday morning then had a call from my brother regarding him being on a caravan club rally in Wrenbury and the fact that i said we were setting off and would be there for the bank holiday weekend....Ha don't think so.....it was this weekend..do we or don't we, 21hrs!! had a quick think and thought what the heck..
We never normally move more than a couple of miles as we need to retrace to get the car with us as were still working the odd day till xmas but my Brother said he would take us back for the car, great.
We set off from Stockton Heath Warrington at 2pm, just about made the Preston Brook tunnel, thank goodness else that would have put us another hour behind. Met a couple at Dutton stop lock and a little chat and said bye as they went on their way. We got through the stop lock and a mile or so on the same couple were mooring with smoke coming from their engine....This was one of those moments that normally you wouldn't question but when your time is so limited you do think twice but then the fact that there would be help only half an hour away with a tow if they needed one we moored and gave a hand, had another chat, fixed the boat and left having exchanged names etc, you know how it goes so i would like to say Hello to a lovely couple on SERENA, Judith and John,who are living aboard thanks to the kids taking all responsibility of the house so they could get on with life. Hope everything's O.K. and that you managed to find the Blog...Anyway the next tunnel was again perfectly timed and we made it to Middlewich at 11pm 9hrs later.
Next morning we set off at 7.30, no breakfast, that was done in shifts. All the locks were falling so well for us and only hit a queue at Swanley which we thought was going to happen along the way but alas as we reach Venetian empty lock, no queue.
We went up the lock here and had to stop for milk as we hadn't a clue when the next chance would be but this then led to smelling food and having egg & chips in the cafe.3/4hr later we were on our way again and not long after this decided we had had enough sun over the two days so we put our canopy up and dropped for some of the littler bridges, last minute wrangle....It was our first time onto the llangollen but we were well aware of the small locks and even though we knew we still read the lift your fenders sign before entering and commented on how tight it must be.
Tim jumped off with Kal and i waited then steered into the lock as i got about 10 foot in we stuck solid. Forward or reverse was useless..OMG i thought weve got one of those boats that has been built too wide Ha HA....no i don't think so...front fenders were down...how the heck. Tim jumped onto the roof and tried to push them down but it wouldn't work so i got the bread knife and ventured out of the cratch, cut the ropes, got covered in horrible slime off the wall...YUK.. and Tim gave them anothe push but still stuck...I went back to the helm and tried to reverse and thank goodness it worked...What idiots we felt, glad nobody was around!!!!!!
We continued on our journey and discovered that not far from Wrenbury one of the locks had been out of action for 4hrs!! lucky again.
Meanwhile my brother had been ringing me from work checking on our progress..it was now about 7pm and he called me. He had finished work gone home got ready and had left warrington at 6.45 we arrived at Wrenbury at 7.15 ish 20hrs travelling hrs over 1 1/2 days later whilst he had got there in just 45minutes!!!!! I am sure we enjoyed our journey more though as it was fantastic....
They have all gone back to work now and were still here. Heading to Marbury today, sounds nice and the weather is a little cooler giving my sunburn a rest!!