Much needed rainy day

We can’t recall when we last had a significant amount of rain, but today it’s poured. A perfect opportunity not to cruise and to stay indoors and do some spring-cleaning. We’ve had the shower doors off & given them a good old polish. However, being in the south now, with it’s hard water, we’ll no doubt being doing this job again before next spring!!

Here we are going through the first lock on the Stratford-on-Avon Canal, a now disused guillotine lock.

The Stratford Canal appears quite shallow, twisty & is in many cuttings full of bluebells. From our map we could see we were in an urban area, but you wouldn’t believe it, literally down in the cut.

We went under a dinky little electric lift bridge, which was very fast. I’m glad the drivers on the lane weren’t like those in Burscough & ram through the barriers as they closed, or there’d have been a big splash!! The rest of the lift bridges were manual.

The Brandwood Tunnel, is big enough for boats to pass, but this was a far better to stop and pass outside.

The Lapworth flight of 21 locks was very pretty. Several of the locks were on very sharp bends, a challenge with an oncoming boat out of the next lock. Goodness know how you’d manage a full size 72’ narrow boat around them!!

An early start was called for to go down Hatton flight of 21 hefty double locks on the Grand Union Canal. As we arrived at the first lock, another narrow boat was just going down, so they waited for us at the second one. We were down in just over 3 hours, with the help of the 6 volunteer lockkeepers who set all the locks for us.

The people we shared Hatton with were on their way to a May bank holiday beer festival at The Harvester pub in Long Itchington, well, it’d be rude to pass that gorgeous village without stopping and having a few pints.

While in Long Itchington, we strolled across a field and I picked lots of wool from a fence to spin.

 

Another evening we were on our way to the pub and were followed across the field by some very friendly locals!!

Our friends Maddie & Paul recently moved from Hertfordshire to the south midlands, just a few miles away, so she picked us up to go for dinner at their new home.

We had a full crew to go up Stockton flight of locks. Maddie, her daughter Alice & three children came. It was SO lovely to have a little crew again and dig out the life jackets.

We’re now on a section of canal that is both the Oxford & Grand Union Canals, between Wigrams & Braunston Turns. The Oxford used to own the stretch and charged large tolls to the GUCC boat to use the section.