And so to home! In the rain, not serious but made Watford locks more interesting!
Only a couple of boats in front of us in the queue, so we soon made it to the top and off through the tunnel back to our mooring. It seems strange to be back here at Crick after all this time away, still it will be nice to go home and see the state of the garden.
(later) Bushes all growing out of control despite the work of alison to cut them back, and we now have cows just over the fence, much to Bella's excitement.
17:23 25/07/2010 5.24 miles 6 locks
Sunday morning madness had set in and by the time we reached the Braunston flight there was a big queue, so we floated around for our turn, eventually locking through with a boatload of young families ( 6 adult 5 children) out for a long weekend, they had been told to 'see the tunnel', which of course involves doing all the locks twice, before returning the boat tomorrow. Now moored at Norton junction ready for the last run home tomorrow through Watford locks.
17:18 24/07/2010 7.23 miles 3 locks
Strange lack of wildlife around here, plenty of cows however! Proper herds all of one type unlike the ratbag collection we have in Buckby. Enough traffic at Hilmorton to make the locks easy, including a young mum who raced everywhere on her bike and insisted on helping us through the locks. We found a pleasant mooring outside Braunston and watched hireboats wizzing by.
19:34 23/07/2010 10.5 miles
Very slow run down to Rugby, a queue of 5 or 6 boats behind a Rose day boat, it eventually moored at Newbold - on the water point and went to the pub! Still it was a great relief to get out from behind them. They reapeared late afternoon having found the throttle thundering back towards Rose to return the boat before the end of the day. We shopped in Tesco and moved on to the golf course to moor for the night. The weather gradually improved with the sun coming out late afternoon.
16:51 22/07/2010 12.6 miles 1 lock
Today's cruise is through Nuneaton outskirts, not very inspiring, but suprisingly clean in the canal, I only counted one bike, and a water tank that had fallen off an allotment! Bedworth is even less inspiring eventually going past the large waterside rubbish dump (sorry it pretends to be a working boatyard), a huge school and finally a golf course, before we hairpin round at Hawksbury junction off the Coventry canal on to the North Oxford. As we pssed through the stop lock the heavens opened and we had steady rain for a short time with thunder in the background. It soon stopped however and we were able to moor in Ansty in the dry. Very tame Moorhen here it keeps trying to come inside the boat.
16:52 21/07/2010 4.61 miles 11 locks
Glorious day, mainly sunny with a bit of wind, headed off for Atherstone flight, and within the space of one lock saw Chris and Helen walking down the other way - what a difference having them around makes. Even so the locks fill extremely slowly, and at the beginning there was little traffic in the opposite direction, so it took around four hours. We rewarded ourselves with chips from the 'chippy'. We are now sitting near the BW Hartshill yard in the evening sun, drink in hand. What a hard life.
18:56 20/07/2010 10.9 miles 2 locks
Well don't speak too soon but we had an excellent days cruising, weather forecast horrible, we had warm air, sun and no rain! And talk about lucky, Glascote locks which had huge queues coming this way went we went down them, had no traffic at all, so we quickly zipped through ( quickly is not quite the word here they are the slowest locks to fill I think I've ever met). Not much wildlife around here, its strange how some parts of the canal have ducks, geese, kingfishers and moorens in abundance, whilst others hardly any. Tommorrow we pray for a fine day as Atherstone locks are hard work in the wet (or dry)!
First away from our moorings in nice sunny weather, but we were in for a shock, the bottom Fradley Junction lock had a queue, 5 or 6 boats long. By the time we got through what felt like hours later there were even more boats in the queue. No idea why, but probably not helped by no boats coming the other way - very strange. We took on water at the junction and then got stuck behind two boats competing to see how slow they could go! We do not go fast, but having to drop in to neutral to avoid catching them up is a bit much.
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