The night before (Tuesday) the sun was setting while it was raining and I loved the huge sky, enough to open the hatch and get a bit wet while I took this.
Trust me (again) but these are alpacas. Unfortunately the fence was just at the wrong height and they wouldn't lift their heads in the short time I had to snap them.
We spotted this rather nice paint job (apart from the turquoise bits) to make the boat look like a pullman carriage. As you can see it was a nice day again, we've done very well so far, avoiding all the rain, not sure how long our luck can last but we're grateful while it does.
We were only heading for Hawkesbury Junction as I'd arranged for Sarah (who's collecting our mail) to come down for a meal at the pub there as she had my postal voting form. This was only about 9miles and shouldn't have taken too long, but unfortunately we got stuck behind a slow boat, make that a VERY slow boat.
We had to get through Nuneaton and in the past we'd not enjoyed that stretch very much as there has always been so much rubbish floating in the water and the couple of times we've pulled in there for John to pop out to get some supplies from a corner store, the towpath had been knee deep in dog poo.
We were pleasantly surprised to note that there was much less rubbish this time and we didn't notice mess on the tow path, although we didn't stop. We were going pretty slowly though, believe me.
Has anyone seen the Doctor? A strange thing to have in your back garden, but certainly a talking point!
After offering sacrifices to the canal gods the boat in front eventually turned up the Ashby canal and as I was doing a little jig of happiness, John says "I don't know how to tell you this, but look ahead." Sure enough another slow boat had appeared and was obviously sent to try us. John later worked out that we were barely doing 2mph as an average. He was having to go in reverse and stay in tickover for much of the journey, and there was no place to easily overtake.
We moored in a brilliant spot just before the junction and enjoyed the sunshine. We popped over and checked out the beer and booked a table for later at the Greyhound. All very nice. We couldn't remember the last time we'd actually stopped there, but I think it was the time we had the time-share boat out of Alvecote marina when we had Tom and his friend Charlie with us and that was probably about 2006? scary to think back actually.
We had a brilliant meal in the pub, booking very necessary but well worth it. It's about an hour from Mercia so a bit far to go for an ordinary night out, but we'll stop here again when we're on the boat.
These tell the tale of getting around Hawkesbury Junction. So much easier when it's not windy and there aren't 10 other boats coming and going. I always get a kick out of turning the 180 degrees and going back on oneself then doing the very small stop lock between the two canals.
Once again we've got a lovely day for it, and this time so slow boats in front, so we were able to maintain our more normal 3mph - such speed merchants!
I'd forgotten the worst parts of the Oxford canal, which are the towpaths and the lack of mooring opportunities. This section is quite wide compared to much we've gone past today and it was still really wet and muddy. Paddy asked to get off to wee at one point and John had problems dropping us off and picking us up again. Luckily it wasn't like this, but it was so overgrown that it was difficult to get through and I was expecting bites galore, amazingly nothings come up as yet so fingers crossed.
Talking of the beast, we've been out nearly a week and no picture of him, so here he is, one hot little dog!
I'm busy knitting this trip, but I can't show pictures as they are Christmas presents. Not as easy as crochet on the back of the boat but I'm managing to adapt.
We're moored at Newbold. Didn't quite make it to Rugby but I've been able to get the groceries I wanted so tomorrow we won't bother to stop there. Not sure where we'll get to but we're enjoying taking it easy and doing short jumps each day.
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