Market Day at Penkridge

Last night we moored at the end of a straight leading up to Deptmore lock and were later joined by a pair of lads pushing a wheelbarrow full of fishing gear. They unloaded about 50yds behind us and proceeded to erect a small tent. They are here for the night we thought; shall we move? No. If fact they were as quiet as mice and greeted us with a good morning at 8am.
At 7am we heard the thump, thump, thump of a single cylinder engine, possibly a Bollinder. Dianne looked out of the porthole and realised that it was pulling a butty behind it with nobody on the tiller. Surely he can't be single handed. If so it will be slow progress following him later. We gave him 90mins whilst we had breakfast before we cast off.
We soon picked up the roar of the holiday traffic on the M6 that stayed in close proximity to us for some 5 miles until we reached Penkridge. Here we moored up to visit the market that is held here each Wednesday and Saturday. It was huge, over 100 stalls just like the one at Eastville in Bristol before the Rovers ground was sacrificed for an IKEA.
We had lunch in the canalside Boat Inn before deciding to stay the night in Penkridge.
Keith decided to dismantle the interns of the wood burning stove and decoke the chimney flue with a purpose made circular wire brush on a rod. A lesson to be learnt here. Never attempt this task if there is a wind blowing. The dust goes everywhere! It was a good job done though as it will go some way to explain why the fire has been such a pig to light earlier in the year.
We were then visited by Lesley and Richard, the owners of the boat that was launched at Great Haywood on Thursday, who passed us earlier. Their boat is a "sailaway" which means that it has an engine but is not fitted out except for sprayfoam insulation. They intend to do this themselves so we were delighted to show them through our boat in case there were any ideas that they might want to adopt on theirs. We will Email them the photos we took of the launch from the bridge we were standing on at the time.
We are moored outside a local's garden and they came out to pass the time of day with us and told us of a good Indian restaurant to visit this evening. It's called FLAMES. Booked for 7:30!