Friday 21st September, 2018

We didn't hurry this morning, as we knew we were ahead of time !!!
The weather during last night had been rainy and the wind was very bad, but this morning seemed to be more pleasant.
We knew we only had about 4 locks to go through, and, as things they are much easier than those we had already been through.
At about midday we got almost to bridge 86, and were signalled by others to moor, as there was a tree down a couple of hundred meters ahead.   We moored  on the opposite side of the canal to the towpath, behind another narrowboat, which was a live on board.  As we had to reverse in to the mooring, the lady from the live on board helped, as the wind had come up again.  Within 3 minutes, a bossy old lady from one of the houses, came out and told us that we had moored on a Private Mooring (which wasn't true) and that we needed to move !! We explained that there was a tree down and we would only be there for as little time as possible.  As it happens, the lady in the house near the canal came out and told us to ignore her, as she was the local busy body, who nobody liked, and that we were actually moored on a 14 day mooring.  We were told that it could be sometime before the tree was moved as the Canal and River Trust don't move that quickly !!!

John walked across the bridge to check out the fallen tree and was told that Wyvern had already been notified.
After about 2 hours, and no sign of anything happening, John decided to phone Wyvern, as there were at least 7 of their boats being held up,

 all of us due to have the boats back by 9am the following morning.  At that stage Wyvern, had been told that the Canal and River Trust were on their way.
Another hour passed, and we could hear chainsaws, so John went to check it out again, but it was the local council, who cleaned up the tree off the path, and left the tree over the canal as it wasn't their problem.

Another call to Wyvern to let them know what had been happening, so at that point, the Owner of Wyvern, James, decided he would come and fix things.  So with an electric chainsaw, and the help of some staff as well as John and others from the boats, they were able to clear away the left hand side of the canal, and they then guided us all through.
We were told that there was another tree down further up the canal, and they there would be staff to guide us through again.  Wyvern staff were also positioned at all the remaining locks to speed up the process.
We thought we may have had time to get to the the Globe Hotel, which is only about 1/2 hr from the Wyvern Marina,  but it got too dark,

and by this time is was about 7.20pm, so we moored in a nice quiet spot for our last night on the Daisy, had ham, cheese, tomato and avocado melts for dinner,  accompanied by Preseco and followed by Magnums.