Leaving Wolverley on the Tuesday morning, we pootled up through a couple of locks to Kinver, getting there around lunchtime and surprisingly finding the visitor moorings more or less completely empty. Kinver sits on high red sandstone ground over the canal and River Stour; a pleasant village/town with most of what you need, and is a bit of a boating honeypot. Going further uphill there are some notable Rock Houses set high up on Kinver Edge. Although we know Kinver well (Song & Dance’s cratch and rear covers and some furniture come from a well known family business here), but despite past visits by boat and car, we’d never struggled all the way up to look at the Rock Houses. SWMBO was insistent that we made the effort to use our National Trust membership, so despite it being warm and muggy, we set off uphill.

We immediately bumped into Ralph Wilson (voluble furniture supplier to the boating fraternity) at the bridge, which delayed matters quite a bit. Then, after a hot and sweaty walk up through the village and climbing further up, almost to the top of Kinver Edge, we found that on Tuesdays, the Rock Houses are closed. Having failed to do the relevant basic homework, the Events Organiser decided the only thing was to continue climbing (!) to check the view from the top of Kinver Edge. Mutter mutter…

The views of Wolverhampton and Birmingham were indeed noteworthy.

Returning to the boat for dinner and a hose down, the visitor moorings had pretty much filled up – it’s not like us to get somewhere earlier than the rest! Nevertheless, Skipper was suitably impressed that our mooring had its own outdoor seating and garden, and pronounced  himself well pleased.