January

We left the Black Country Living Museum on 2nd and passed through Tipton and, behind the slowest boat ever, down Factory Locks. We arrived to a very quite Birmingham and moored in Cambrian Wharf. We had a visit from Peter and Heather who were in Birmingham for the day. About a week later they joined us in Cambrian Wharf on their boat Blackberry Way, enjoying a couple of visits to Jimmy Spices making good use of their promotional offer of buying one dinner and getting the second for £1 - well it would be rude not to wouldn't it?

A very quiet Cambrian Wharf after we had left

On 17th January we received the very sad news that James' Grandad had passed away - he had reached the grand age of 98 and up until a few days earlier had still been living very independently and strolling into his local town of Cardigan in West Wales. So on 22nd we headed off to Wales, as unusually his funeral was on a Saturday. The service was very well done, although obviously sad, but it was nice to see lots of family who we haven't seen for a while, Jess and Lee had also made the long journey up from Poole so it was lovely to see them again too.

On a happier note on Saturday we went out to celebrate Heather's birthday and we had a fantastic evening at Ming Moon, another all you can eat buffet, we certainly got value for money and the food was delicious. Their daughter Andrea was there too along with her husband Russ and son Tyler who did very well considering he's only 3 years old. We got a taxi back to Blackberry Way for a night cap, then we staggered back to LJ on the other side of the canal.

Andrea took this picture of me, James, Peter and Heather

Paradise Forum is being demolished which formed part of the old library, thought I'd better get a photo to look back on. 

The old library is coming down slowly

Lock 11 on the Farmer's flight having a bit of TLC

Well the counters have been reset, so here goes for 2016.

9.5 miles and 3 locks