Thank God for the working boats

We left early this morning, well 7.45am; it was a mizzy day, with a heavy mist in the air. We went through Cowley Peachey Lock and filled with water. It took a hour out of our day to fill and we didn't plan it would take so long. Still we pushed on towards Denham Deep lock, where we bumped into a diesel boat and filled up under the A40 road bridge. We were running low and our fuel gauge has packed up while we were in Paddington, another job. Derwent6 took 175 litres and must have been thirsty, but we did get it at 80p a litre....Oh it's good to be back on the canals. We cracked on through Rickmansworth and battled with the leaves in the cut but it didn't hold us up much. What did hold us up was the amount of moored boats we had to pass on idle. There just seems to be more each year when we come down this section, and BW seem to have given up on most of them. We then met up with Tom on the coal boat and he passed over four bags of coal to add to the two we already had from last winter. Lets hope we're sort of ready in case we do get this cold snap they are talking about. After 13 miles and 13 locks we were getting a bit tired and decided to call it a day at Ironbridge lock. It was just starting to get dark. We did manage to get a telly signal here and after that long day we were like zombies on the settee.