Thursday 13th September

Today we have been on the boat for 1 month.  We have got ourselves into a routine and we now start to have a good knowledge about the boat.  We need to keep her clean and tidy both inside and out.  It is surprising how many comments we get about the boat after we have given her a good clean outside.  However we never get both sides clean at the same time. 

We got up early this morning and I nipped to the co-op which was about 30 seconds from our mooring.  We really liked Leamington Spa and felt really at home there. 

In order to turn the boat round we needed to go towards Warwick before we found a winding hole.

Great weather this morning: I could have worn my shorts.  Lots of locks again today and we needed to find a partner boat to travel with.  This took a little while but eventually we found the right couple who owned their boat so therefore understood the locks etc.  No excitement today apart from a baby duck who got in the staircase lock with us. Very pleased to hear that the Gorry's received my card and are now blogging us.  Also we had a Waterways Volunteer who informed us that there was a noisy mother duck at the top of the locks.  Well the baby appeared to love the locks and understood them as soon as the gate was open he was first in and out.  He was treating the locks like a Disney Ride.

We stopped at around 5 p.m., both knackered as we had being doing the locks all day. We have just counted and it was 23, all wide beam locks, with terrible paddles and the gearing is just bizarre and you need to give them about 36 turns on each paddle.

 

Moored up on the Oxford Canal just before the next long flight of locks by Nap ton-on-the-Hill.