It seems like a while since we had a blue sky.  The air temperature today wasn’t a lot higher than of late, but the bright sunshine was welcome, so we went for a walk in the late morning.  After lunch we cast off again and soon arrived at the only lock of the day.  For a change I was warm enough not to mind which of us got off to work it – Clare went.

I had to work a little harder than I expected to stop the boat drifting forward, and eventually got on to the towpath and held the front of the boat by hand, so I’d be ready to push that end off when Clare opened the gate.  It gradually became apparent that she wasn’t managing to do that, so I tied the middle rope to a bollard and went to add my weight to the equation.  That sorted it in no time.

When we started seeing boats moored up as we came in to Burton-on-Trent we decided to moor up too.  We went for another walk along the towpath in the pleasant sunshine.  We soon found the start to Kingfisher Walk, a former railway running parallel to the canal.  Kingfishers is another thing we haven’t seen for a while.  There were large sculptures to remind us what we’ve been missing.

We got back to the boat well before sunset – we’ll have to start making better use of the later parts of the daylight now the days are starting to get longer again.  The small amount of cloud that had formed towards the end of the day also gave us something else we’ve not seen for a while, a lovely sunset.