Off down the rest of the Lapworth flight, we passed a Canal World forum member's boat at the marina at the end of the flight, but the marina is through a locked gate - so we couldn't go to introduce ourselves.
Leaving the Northern Stratford Canal at the bottom of the Lapworth flight
One of the strange barrel roofed cottages on the Stratford Canal
When we got to the top of the Hatton flight, at about 11:30, we had the opportunity to admire the attractive new brass nuts on the throttle of Canal World Forum's "Tawny Owl".
At the lock there was a single hander waiting for another boat to go down with him. At his suggestion we lashed the boats together to 'breast them up', so that they could be driven down together. Chalice is 50 foot, and when we've 'breasted up' before, it's been with similar sized boats. This boat was 70 foot, and the owner wanted the bows together, although it became clear that it would have worked much better if the sterns were together. It's also quite difficult to get the two boats to stay close enough when you can't lash both ends together. No problem, he steered the two boats down, while I lockwheeled on 'Margaret', and Alan and David worked the locks. There were a lot of boats moving, including several breasted up. We did the flight in about 3:00 hours - not very fast.
Travelling down Hatton.
The weather was completely different to the last time we did Hatton, the sun shone, and there were loads of gongoozlers out.
At the bottom of the flight we stopped to take on water, where I took this picture of a painted lady butterfly on a late buddleia bloom.
On through the Cape locks, and a stop at the big Tesco near bridge 46. We decided to have a barbecue if we could find somewhere suitable to moor.
We stopped near Radford Semele, where there were a lot of other boats moored, and set up our little portable barbecue near the hedgerow. Because we like to do baked potatoes in the barbecue it tends to take a bit longer than traditional barbecues, but we had a good meal ready in about an hour. I like barbecues, but they take quite a lot of care, and because of the constant traffic of walkers and cyclists along the towpath here you need to be careful where you put it.
Miles: 12.8, Locks: 29
Total miles: 315.9, Total locks: 315
No comments:
Post a Comment