This morning we were annoyed to be woken by walkers and joggers who were chatting going past at 6am, there seemed to be quite a stream of them. When we finally got up we noticed many of them had numbers on their shorts and they looked a bit worn out. They are on the London to Bristol race, 145 miles along the canals, they started yesterday at 6am so had been running/walking for 24 hours and still had 45 miles to go, they must be mad. I looked up the details (just in case Gill wanted to enter next year, I have offered to pay her £65 entry fee), the record is 25 hours, that’s almost 6mph! You have to complete the race in 45 hours. They must pass at least 200 pubs, now that would be a good pub crawl.
As previously advertised we went through the 26 locks today sharing the work with a couple from Staffordshire, Gill drove our boat and Mike drove the other while his wife Kim and I did all the hard work. That is why they are smiling in the picture, I was a worn out by lunchtime when we finished. I will sleep well tonight and probably will be very stiff tomorrow but not as stiff as anyone who ran 145 miles. Gill did operate the two swing bridges (picture at the top of the page) as her contribution, they are not very light.
We have been surprised how few boats there are on this canal, today only five boats came up the long flight of locks and we only seem to meet one or two boats an hour going the opposite way to us as we meander our way between pubs. Talking of which, the picture below shows us moored outside the Barge Inn where we are having dinner tonight, no problem finding our way back to the boat.
Tomorrow is our last full day, the boat goes back on Monday morning and we head home.