IWA Festival Preston Brook

We have just completed our first major trip in Maria Jessie, we went to the IWA festival at Preston Brook. There we met up with Val's cousin and husband on their Northwich Trader "Isambard".

It was probably a bit adventurous in the time available to us, we had to press on and cruise for mostly nine hours per day. We made the trip into a ring route, travelling from Napton on the Oxford, then the Coventry before joining the Trent & Mersey to make the run north. We

arrived at Preston Brook on Friday evening, eight days after we started.

We only stayed at the Festival until Sunday morning, leaving the site before most people were up and about. We decided to make the return route down ther Shroppie, and this we really enjoyed. We arrived just short of Wolverhampton on the Wednesday evening in pouring rain.

We had heard much about the reputation of the Wolverhampton 21 so decided to tackle this early in the morning, we were through the flight by 10 am. We then went down through the Black Country to Gas Street Basin interestingly we only saw four moving boats all day. A night in Gas Street before heading off down the Grand Union in the direction of home where we eventually arrived on Sunday evening.

The trip was a "baptism of fire" for both of us. We don't think we will go to such time pressure in the future; there seemed little time to enjoy some beautiful surroundings, but we're really looking forward to the next trip.