Near Br 64, Grand Union Canal

 Just before we left Birmingham we took delivery of the new covers for our settee.  They look really great (if very expensive!).  I am also in the process of re-vamping the curtains which are now 18 years old and were beginning to show their age.

When we woke of this morning we had no electricity!  Why do we always have a crisis at the start of our cruises?

Anyway, I phoned Dylan at Swallow Cruises and he promised to have a look at the batteries when we passed by his boatyard.  Which he duly did and pronounced the batteries as fine and they were reading 100%.  So it was a bit of a mystery.

We had intended to stop at the top of the locks but we met a boat at the last lift bridge coming the other way, so decided to go for it.  Big mistake!  There was a boat in front of us, so we only had one lock for us until we got past the Boot Inn where we met up with a lovely female volunteer lock keeper who helped us down to the junction.  There were more volunteers re-surfacing the towpath and generally tidying up and painting Lock 18.

We moved onto the Grand Union canal and immediately felt the benefit of deeper water.  No scraping noises and lots of power.

This is a "card in a box".  Basically a box shaped card that can be folded flat to fin into a normal envelope.

The inside of the box has 3 tabs and the die-cut items are fixed to them with strips of acetate so that they look like they are floating when the box opens out.

I used lots of baby related die cuts to make this card and yellow gingham paper to make it gender neutral.