Just finished scrubbing the blood off of the bathroom carpet

If I should ever mysteriously disapear and the police come onto Matilda Rose, SOCO and forensics would have a field day with the carnage that's been going on here this last week. The DNA that must be floating around here!
G went through to the bedroom for a pre dinner nap whilst I read my book fell asleep on the sofa. I awoke to cries of, 'who let that bloody cat in here with this?'. Daisy had jumped through the side hatch with a rabbit and dragged it through the, internal, cat flap to the bathroom undetected. She then gleefully set about dismembering it which was where G found her with her own personal re-release of the chain saw massacre (there's not room for two thespians on one boat).

Anyway, enough of the x ratings- we awoke this morning to a couple of scroungers for breakfast

G set off at 9.00am whilst I had a leisurely shower, breakfasted and did some domestics

I then set off with the dogs and worked the first lift bridge, waiving the hire boat behind through before closing it. This little collection below had me completely fooled until I loaded the pics onto the computer (really must get my eyes tested).

G stopped briefly and the hire boat went past - they then dropped the next lift bridge on us despite us being close, peeping the horn and that no-one was waiting to cross.  grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

The sort of day when a spot of paddling and shade-seeking were the order of the day.

My boys would have loved to have joined them; due to the excellent condition of the bank on the towpath side, they couldn't even reach for a drink.

The hire boat had to let us through the next lift bridge as we'd parked MR up their exhaust pipe to make sure they didn't do it again, so we went through and never saw them again after the chaos with all the triple parking and fueling that was going on at Viking Afloat Boatyard outside Whitchurch.

Conversely, another hire boat coming up waited for ages to let us through a lift bridge and closed it behind us.

Our last lift bridge of the day was Whitchurch - someone really needs to fix this one, I'd walked a fair way, but this one finished off my dodgy back and I hitched a lift on MR for the last half mile to a, surprisingly deserted, Grindley Brook, before setting off on foot again.

The 3 locks below were a bit busier, but no long delays and we moored between Povey and Willeymoor locks after a pleasant 6 1/2 hour run.