Our final visitor arrives ...

Today we collect Barry's daughter Jamie from Tamworth station, and we'll be going to check out the wedding venue tomorrow.

We didn't have too far too travel from Whittington to Glascote, where we moored up for the evening.  It turned into a gloriously sunny blue sky day, I'm hoping that the same thing will happen on the afternoon of 26th September! 

 The lovely trip from Whittington to Tamworth

There was certainly lots of traffic on the canal today, though with only the two locks at Glascote this didn't cause us much trouble.

Approaching Fazeley

New housing development complete with a marina

Fazeley Junction, through the bridge to Tamworth or turn right to Birmingham

Not sure if this chap is a boater or not but he was making the most of some of the timber by the cut - not sure if it was all old!

 Crossing the Tame Aquaduct approaching Tamworth

The Tame River below

Idyllic day to be cruising the canals

Barry was helping a boat through the locks at Glascote, and got chatting to Richard Swan from Narrowboat World, a web site giving all manner of information about the waterways with a number of contributors who give their time for free.  They'd just had their boat painted and it was very shiny, we had a bit of a perve at it; if only ours looked like that ...  Barry said "It'll look like that by then end of next week!" - yeah right, as if that's possible!

  Glascote locks had a bit of traffic through

    The locks and lock cottage

Richard Swan and his wife with their very shiny boat 

Looking back through to the Tamworth Cruising Club moorings 

We've now travelled a full circle around the midlands and north of England, and have just one small bit of canal left that we've not yet travelled - a section of the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal which goes into Birmingham.  We're only going as far as we need to to get to the The Dog and Dublet, our wedding venue next week.

We turned around at the Hudson Boatbuilders entrance and moored there for the night. We were the only boat there which was surprising considering all the traffic about. Maybe the other boaters know something we don't.

Jamie arrived in Tamworth around 1030pm, and we walked back through the town and checked out the spooky castle at night-time.  It was a very lively place with an abundance of Indian restaurants and bars emitting sounds of people having fun.