Saturday 27 April 2019 Barton Marina

We arrived hale and hearty at Birmingham Airport after an uneventful trip - other than holding up the plane in Sydney while an engineer was called in to fix Lawrence's seat and Lawrence then discovering when we landed in Doha he had lost his phone down said seat, thereby holding up proceedings once again whilst it was retrieved!

After stopping at Sutton Coldfield to get sim cards for our phones and stocking up on M&S quiches, we arrived at the Marina about half past 10 to find Mike and Tim waiting for us. Having a couple of hours to kill until the boat handover we settled down in the nearest cafe and over L's 3rd breakfast for the day (having started on his first about 4.00am) caught up on each others news, while watching the weather steadily deteriorate into a howling gale. There was little chance we would be getting underway today.

Sure enough when we met up with Justin for the handover he strongly advised against trying to leave the marina in this wind - he was probably, and justly, concerned about the carnage to the other boats, not to mention Aqua Beatha we would cause trying to manouvre a narrowboat out of a tight space and then out of the marina in this sort of wind.

So here we are, cosy and warm, stripped down to tshirts in our little boat, bobbing about on its mooring, while it is raining, windy and bloody freezing outside.

The unpacking and stowing is nearly all done. Tim and Mike, in charge of provisioning have brought along enough food for the whole eight weeks, lucky us, and with some clever juggling have managed to fit it all into the galley. Mike's mum, Jean has once again spoilt us with a surfiet of scones, and two fruit cakes. Can't wait to get stuck in, thank you Jean.

So thats it for day 1 of our cruise - 0 miles and 0 locks!