As promised, one of the choicer sections of the tow path, that along with the sides being sloping rock for much of the way meant that the first section of the Oxford left a lot to be desired, It seems a bit better now, but again it's a bit more urban at the moment which might explain it.
We pulled into a place called Newbold, which is mainly known for a small tunnel to the north of the village, to get a few basics. The Co-op was handy but no chance of anything other than basics I'm afraid. Still at least we got a few bits and pieces, not sure when the next chance will be. Still I'm good with lentils......
Anyway as we pulled away we were just about to go under a bridge and had to stop for a boat coming through and John lost power and steerage. Luckily we were heading towards the bank and so I jumped off and pulled us in far enough for John to get off and help (it was still pretty windy) and then he dived into the depths of the weed hatch...
This is what came out - bearing in mind that he'd done it a couple of days ago after we came off the Coventry because of the amount of rubbish we'd gone through. There is a lot of rope and string, bits of plastic bags etc. all stuff that has found it's way into the canal to catch out poor boaters. Still we felt that at least it had happened where we could get to the bank easily, see above for how much worse it could have been!
Couldn't resist taking a photo of this - its called 'That 70's Boat' and is covered in a sort of floating mural of icons of the 70's. Quite amazing.
We cruised past Rugby and the sun emerged and it actually became almost warm for a while. Then we got to Hilmorton Locks. They are a nice set of 3 locks rising 18'7" and unlike most they are duplicate locks. Two locks side by side which means that you can have one boat going up and another coming down! Much better use of water I feel.
Here we are. I'm just coming to the top of my lock and the other boat is just coming in to go down. PLUS there was a volunteer lock keeper on the first lock which made it even easier. All of the locks were in our favour and we felt that it was the best set of locks we'd done in a long time! Took no time at all - AND the sun was shining.
The second pair of locks had something carved in both sides of the lock gates, but I liked this one best.
We found a good mooring at the top of the locks and have walked onto see the mooring outside the pub where we're meeting everyone tomorrow. There's room for 2 boats and both are taken at the moment. We've decided to stay up here tonight and then go down in the morning and hope that there's a spot, otherwise we'll have to moor up on the tow path and it's not brilliant. We've decided that I'll jump off a bit before with a walkie-talkie and do a reccie and if there's a spot we'll nab it and if not we'll stay a couple of hundred yards back - there's nowhere to moor on from it so fingers crossed.
There are grey and white cattle in the field next to us - don't think I've seen grey ones before - anyone any idea what they might be - they're quite attractive .... for cows!
Seen more flowers out now and the hedges are becoming greener so spring might be on the way - after all it's not the end of April yet.............
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