Monday started in a leisurely fashion with a late breakfast and an amble to the village shop before we set off towards Stratford. It was already baking hot but we made quite swift progess as we met boats travelling in the opposite direction at almost every lock. The conversation with crews in every case revolved around horseflies – we all compared bites, sizes of bites, location of bites, remedies for bites….
It’s hard work, but I do get a sit-down sometimes
Eventually we made it to Lowsonford, mooring opposite the Fleur-de-Lys, whose beer garden looked so inviting that Brian headed straight off to order the drinks while I shut up the boat. We whiled away an hour or so in the sunshine before returning to catch up on phone messages, emails and, of course, this blog – only to find no phone signal, no mobile broadband signal nor, for good measure, any TV signal. (Hence no blog yesterday). Why do we miss technology so much?
We were back at the pub a couple of hours later for an excellent meal, rounded off with a final drink in the garden – but the storm-clouds were beginning to gather…
On Tuesday, we really thought we were going to be staying put for the day as from the early hours the thunder rumbled around us, went away, came back again with lightning, all the while accompanied by bouts of torrential rain. However, by 11 the rain had stopped, the clouds had lifted and a very weak sun put in a brief appearance, so we decided to head off.
This time we were following another boat so had to refill every lock before descending, but the scenery did compensate.
Barrel-roofed cottages, originally built for lock keepers, are unique to the Stratford Canal.
Allegedly they are shaped that way because the builders were so used to building bridges! Most have now been modernised and extended – some quite dramatically
We’d aimed to get to the Anglo-Welsh boatyard at Wootton Wawen to get the loo pumped out, but amazingly it was packed so full of hireboats not being hired out that we couldn’t get close to the service wharf. The recession is hitting this industry pretty hard.
So we tootled on for another mile to find a great countryside mooring for the night, somewhere between Wootton Wawen and Wilmcote. The sun is shining again and the natives are friendly
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