Wednesday 14th September

Another lovely day but still with some wind but nothing like it was. We left the mooring at 10am (I heard the church clock chime) and went through the two staircase locks which took us up into the Clock Basin where we got diesel. As we were leaving the basin the clock chimed 11am – it’s amazing how long things take! Our goal today was to get to Kidderminster to order some furniture for home! The canal was lovely on a perfect autumn day, there is a slight colour change on some of the trees but mainly everywhere is still green. Last time we came down the Staffs & Worcs canal at the end of July we hardly saw another boat but today it was busy with a queue at Kidderminster lock. We moored up outside Sainsburys which is in a retail park – I had spotted this on the way down! While we were at home we had more or less decided on a corner unit and chair for the sitting room at home but didn’t order it. However we realised that if we left it until we got home again at the end of October we probably wouldn’t get the furniture before Christmas. I checked as to where the nearest SCS was and lo and behold it was at the retail park at Kidderminster :-) We didn’t have any further to walk than if we had arrived by car! Maxine, who served us, was fascinated by our travels and we spent much longer in the store than anticipated but she made the sale and we hope to have everything delivered at the end of October. We pressed on through a couple of locks and decided to moor up just above Wolverley Lock as between there and Kinver its very dark and it was also a good Millie place as she has been rather starved of nice places since Sunday.